CHENNAI: More than 16,800 seats remained vacant in 240 colleges across the State as the single window admission to engineering colleges in Tamil Nadu came to an end on Sunday.

Of the 64,356 students who were called for counselling, 40,397 opted for the 57,776 seats on offer in the Anna University's constituent colleges, government, aided and unaided self-financing institutions.

The counselling began on July 17.

About 640 Plus-Two (failed) candidates who took the instant examinations last month have been called for supplementary counselling scheduled for Monday.

According to V. Ramachandran, secretary, Tamil Nadu Engineering Admissions, 16,875 seats remained vacant at the end of the general counselling. In all, 22,932 students did not attend the counselling. .

As usual circuit branches — electronics and communication engineering, computer sciences and engineering and information technology — had the highest number of takers. There were few takers for rubber technology, textile chemistry and paper and pulp technology.

Enquiries among colleges reveal a good number among the 22,000 students, who did not attend counselling, could have either joined colleges under the management quota or deemed universities.

Some of the popular colleges have kept dozens of students on the wait list, hoping to admit them in the seats that would be deemed as lapsed after counselling.

Twenty engineering colleges, including nine self-financing colleges, have filled all their seats. Though, the number of unfilled seats is high, more than 88 per cent of the available seats were filled this year as against 74.7 per cent last year.

The number of seats has also increased this year, as non-minority and minority self-financing colleges surrendered 65 and 50 per cent of their seats to the single window counselling.

The number of seats available for the government counselling was 57,776, against 43,346 last year.

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