Online counselling for engineering courses begins

By Our Staff Reporter

GUNTUR, AUG. 5. Online counselling for general students (open competition) for admissions to various engineering colleges in the State commenced on Sunday at five centres.

Disclosing this at a press conference here, the Minister for Technical Education, Mr. Alapati Rajendra Prasad, said that counselling commenced at Hyderabad, Visakhapatnam, Guntur, Tirupati and Warangal. Centralised counselling for admission of students having reservations under various special categories like the physically handicapped, NCC, sports and ex- servicemen had already been completed. Counselling for the open competition seats upto 8000 ranks would be taken up in the first phase. This would end on August 14.

There were 43,288 seats in various branches in as many as 164 engineering colleges across the State. The Minister said that 3,643 seats were meant for non-resident Indians quota (management's discretion) and 2,521 seats were reserved for minority students in the existing colleges.

Therefore, counselling would be held for 37,124 seats in all. The total number of seats in all branches of various engineering colleges, inclusive of all reservations, in the last academic year, were 30,856. Thus, 12,432 new seats were granted to the State additionally. Mr. Rajendra Prasad said that while there were 153 private engineering colleges, 11 were directly run by universities. There were 1,350 seats in B.Pharmacy course in 23 private colleges and three university-run institutions.

In the engineering stream, the total number of seats in Government colleges were 2,383. While there were 13,820 seats in engineering colleges in Andhra University area, 20,565 seats were there in colleges of Osmania University area and 6,520 seats in the colleges under Sri Venkateswara University area.

Only 500 to 600 students were being called for counselling on the first two days and 1,000 students would be called every day from then onwards. The choice of joining a particular branch and the college would be left to students, subject to the condition that he or she stood in the order of merit. Almost all students, who obtained ranks below 50, were preferring Regional Colleges of Engineering (RECs). Some of them might drop out even before taking admission, if they secured ranks in the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs).

In order to allow students and their parents to know the position, digital display of seats and branches in various colleges was being displayed through closed-circuit televisions, said the Minister. Every counselling centre was provided with two mega-byte-per-second leased lines.

The second phase of counselling would be taken up as soon as the first phase was completed.

Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Section  : Southern States
Previous : Central team coming today to assess drought
Next     : Wakf Board in limbo