TNEA: 33,000 skip certificate verification

Giving the exact number, sources from the DOTE on Friday told DT Next that of the total of 1,33,166 students, who registered online, 33,106 candidates did not turn up for the certificate verification process.

A senior official from DOTE said that the absentee candidates would not be eligible to attend counselling. Therefore, this year only about one lakh candidates would be taken into consideration for counselling process, which would he held through multiple rounds from July 3 to 28. In 2018, about 1.10 lakh candidates have applied counselling with only about 75,000 students came for counselling. DOTE official indicated that this year only between 60,000 and 70,000 would be coming for the counselling.

He said that this year a total of 1.47 lakh engineering seats are available in about 500 engineering colleges in Tamil Nadu. The DOTE is in the process of preparing merit list for the students to be released on June 17.

According to the official, the counselling for special reservation including differently abled, ex-servicemen and sports quota, would be held on June 20 and 21. Engineering colleges are expected to open from the first week of August this year.

After a gap of more than a decade, DOTE has decided to conduct counselling this year for students, seeking engineering admissions, after Anna University refused to conduct over a row with Higher Education Department on the amendment in the structure of counselling committee. Accordingly, the online registration started on May 2 and ended on May 31 with 1.33 lakh applicants registering for the seats. Soon after assigning random numbers to the applicants, the certification verification started in 45 student’s facilitation centres across the State from Jun 6 to 13.