2 lakh forms sold, but BE seats may still go vacant

Chennai: At least 50,000 students have already dropped out of the race for government engineering seats this year. Until Wednesday, the last day to submit applications for single window counselling for admission to engineering courses, Anna University received 1.55 lakh filled-in applications of the 2.28 lakh sold. Officials expect another 25,000 filled-in applications.
“We received more applications than last year, and the number is likely to increase because we have decided to accept applications sent by post today and will reach us only two days later,” said vice-chancellor P Mannar Jawahar.
Last year, 1.48 lakh of the 1.6 lakh candidates who bought applications wanted to take part in the counselling and 1.05 lakh eventually took part.
Academics said the rise application sales was due to Anna University starting sales before results were announced. The All India Council for Technical Education has not yet officially released the number of additional seats to be added this year, but sources put the figure at around 40,000. Going by number of seats in the 525 engineering colleges in the state, at least 25,000 seats will go vacant this year.