BANGALORE: Over 6,200 engineering seats have no takers this year. That is a whopping 3,200 more than last year, thanks to a Government order increasing the minimum eligibility for seat aspirants from 35 per cent to 45 per cent marks in the Second Pre-University examination. The result: these unfilled seats will now go back to private college managements.

Last year, 62,000 candidates had qualified to apply for engineering seats. This time, that number fell to 47,000.

With the end of the "casual vacancy" seat selection process on Saturday, the Directorate of Technical Education will now hold a reconciliation meeting to transfer the unfilled government quota seats to private managements.

In all, 30,020 B.E. seats were available this year in the State's 118 colleges, including two government colleges, and one university college and nine private aided engineering colleges.

Of these seats, 21,919 were offered under lower fee seat category and 8,101 under higher fee category.

A total of 29,465 seats were offered last year of which 16,094 were allotted under concessional fee category and 10,296 under higher fee category.

With high demand and short supply, all the MBBS seats were taken this year too. But there was a drastic reduction in the number of eligible candidates for medical/dental seats.

While 42,000 candidates were eligible to select the seats last year, the number fell to 12,700 this year.

The reason was that CET ranks were based only on the entrance test and only those who had secured a minimum of 50 per cent in the CET and physics, chemistry, biology combination in the Second PUC examination were considered.

Separate lists

Unlike last year, separate rank lists were prepared, one for medical and dental seats and another for Indian Systems of Medicine (ISM) and Homoeopathy.

With the late approval of the Government Medical College in Hassan, the number of medical seats went beyond 2,000 this year.

All, except 57 seats, were allotted, including 443 under the free category and 1,629 in the higher fee category. There are 33 medical colleges in the State, including seven government institutions.

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