Raising questions over survival of several engineering colleges in the State, 1,00,392 seats remained vacant in the Convenor quota after the first phase of counselling that was completed on Friday. Last year 76,310 seats were vacant while 40,273 seats went vacant in 2010.
Out of the 2.10 lakh candidates eligible for admissions this year only 1.37 lakh candidates attended certificate verification of which 1,34,373 lakh students were allotted seats.
Electronics and Communication Engineering (ECE) with 22,223 seats, Computer Science Engineering (CSE) with 24,448 and Electrical and Electronics Engineering (EEE) with 16,364 contributed to the majority vacancies. Information Technology (IT) with 11,126 seats and Mechanical Engineering with 9,428 vacant seats followed.
Six colleges had zero admissions while 24 colleges had less than 10 admissions and some of these are in big towns. Managements consider that colleges are economically viable if 35 per cent of the seats were filled and this year 253 colleges could not cross that figure.
Only 262 colleges could get more than 200 admissions. In 53 colleges, admissions were between 500 and 800 and these are considered to be the good colleges.
While seats in government colleges were totally filled, 114 private colleges could attract 100 per cent admissions. Some of these colleges in the city include CBIT, Vasavi, VNR Vignan Jyothi, Vidya Jyothi, CVSR College and Gokaraju Rangaraju among others.
Technical Education Commissioner Ajay Jain said that candidates would have to download the allotment letters and report at the allotted colleges before September 20. Colleges would upload the vacancies by September 24 and the second phase of counselling would be held from September 26 to 29.
2,000 students not allotted seats
He said about 2,000 students were not allotted any seat as there were no vacancies in the colleges preferred by them and they could also participate in the second phase.
Mr. Jain said candidates who studied in Government Junior Colleges and eligible for fee reimbursement would have to approach the Certificate Verification Centres again to get fresh allotment letters.
A toll-free number 1800-425-8368 had been set up for registering grievances on the allotments. Similarly, students could also send email on ‘ccoadms@gmail.com’.
