The first phase of the academic counselling for engineering admissions will start on Monday in the backdrop of the general strike announced by the Opposition parties.
But with only 570 candidates called on the first day, officials expect it to go on smoothly. “We are starting only at 10:30 a.m. and outstation candidates would have come early. Candidates in Chennai hopefully would not have too many problems,” an official said.
On Sunday, counselling for physically handicapped candidates was completed. Higher Education Minister K. Ponmudy gave the allotment letters to the toppers.
For the 1,000 seats reserved for the three categories of physically handicapped persons, 35 hearing impaired, 30 visually impaired and 312 orthopaedically impaired persons came for the counselling.
Providing details from the vocational counselling process that concluded on Saturday, V. Rhymend Uthariaraj, secretary, Tamil Nadu Engineering Admissions 2010, said 3,761 candidates were allotted seats of the total of 4,016 available seats.
Among these, 2,701 were first generation graduates, he said. This represents 71.81 per cent of the total number of candidates who obtained seats in the vocational counselling process.
The State government would be bearing the cost of the tuition fees to be paid by these candidates. For the academic counselling, over 78,000 candidates had applied as first generation graduates.
