The Hindu : Tamil Nadu / Chennai News : Engineering seats: magic figure will increase today

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Tuesday, Jul 08, 2008
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Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu - Chennai

Engineering seats: magic figure will increase today

Priscilla Jebaraj

Already 69,731 seats available for academic stream students

CHENNAI: Students tracking the number of available government quota seats before the counselling process begins at the end of this week are likely to find the magic figure rising by 1,500 to 1,800 additional seats on Tuesday. There are already 69,731 seats available for academic stream students.

With the All India Council for Technical Education giving its approval for 71 new self-financing engineering colleges to start operations in the State from this academic year, the inspection and affiliation process is on.

AICTE inspects the “macro aspects” of institutions, such as the land, funding, faculty and basic infrastructure, explained R. Sivakumar, the commissioner of the directorate of technical education. However, colleges must then apply to one of the four Anna Universities for affiliation, before which the Universities will conduct their own inspection process of the “micro aspects” to ensure that they have the requisite facilities to provide quality education, he said.

Anna University, Chennai has received applications for affiliation from 10 to 12 colleges so far. Inspections are being carried out, and these colleges are expected to receive their affiliation on Tuesday, said vice chancellor P. Mannar Jawahar. He added that these colleges each have 240 seats of which 65 per cent will be surrendered to the government quota. This means that between 1,560 and 1,885 seats will be added to the pool on Tuesday.

The other Anna Universities in Coimbatore, Tiruchi and Tirunelveli are also accepting applications for affiliation and conducting inspections. They are expected to add 3,000 to 5,000 more seats to the government quota pool by July 10, said Tamil Nadu Engineering Admissions Secretary V. Rhymend Uthariaraj. Counselling begins on July 11.

Overall, AICTE has given its approval for 71 colleges, of which 7 women’s colleges will have an intake of 300 students each, said AICTE southern regional chairman M.S. Palanichamy. One other college will accept 180 students this year, while the remainder will take in 240 students each. If they all receive affiliation, together they will contribute 11,000 seats to the government quota this year.

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