CHENNAI: Most of the unaided engineering colleges in the State will surrender a certain percentage of their seats to the single window pool/government quota. While the association or consortium of engineering colleges has not given a written commitment, individual colleges are not averse to surrendering the seats.

"We want to avoid confusion among students... and also want to abide by the Government directive. Rural colleges, in fact, will gain by getting more students through the single window system of admissions," says K.N. Ramachandran, chairman of a college and vice-president of the Consortium of Professional, Arts and Science Colleges in Tamil Nadu.

Preferred procedure

P. Selvaraj, head of a Tiruchi-based college and secretary of the consortium, says colleges prefer to follow last year's procedure (when they surrendered at least 30 percent of their seats to the Government quota).

The debate began last week when the Government initiated a discussion with the unaided engineering colleges. A meeting to be held on March 4 was cancelled. It was later held on March 10.

Mr. Ramachandran told The Hindu that formal communication about the second meeting did not reach many colleges even in Chennai and that was why only about 40 colleges out of the total of 235 colleges attended the meeting.

Mr. Selvaraj, who attended the meeting, referred to reports that the colleges were against surrendering seats. "We did not want to commit ourselves because the matter of conducting an entrance test for the Government pool is still before the Supreme Court. But we will abide by the verdict once it comes. We will cooperate with any Government effort to get more seats into the single window pool."

The Supreme Court had ruled in August 2005 that the Government could not carve out any quota from seats of unaided professional colleges nor insist on them surrendering seats. It allowed the colleges to exercise their choice on surrendering a part of their seats to the Government quota. This would be filled through the single window system.

Enquiries with colleges across the State show that they may surrender 30 per cent of their seats. It remains to be seen whether they would surrender 30-50 per cent of the seats in Electronics and Communication Engineering, Information Technology and Computer Sciences.

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