Two of the top 10 in the engineering merit list released by Tamil Nadu Engineering Admission (TNEA) 2019 are from Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) schools and one girl is from Andhra Pradesh board.
The TNEA committee for 2019 released the merit list for 1,03,150 applicants to engineering seats for the current academic year.
Higher Education Minister K.P. Anbalagan, who released the list, said the delay in its release and the subsequent change in the counselling dates for special category seats was due to the department’s efforts to find students who had not come for verification of certificates on the appointed date.
He said the department had tried to reach the students using the phone numbers they had provided. It transpired that the students had gone to browsing centres to submit applications instead of the TNEA facilitation centres.
“We suspect that 4,000 of the 7,000 students who contacted us following our announcement, may have gone to browsing centres,” he said.
This year, there will be 479 colleges for counselling. During the release of random number, the Minister had said that 494 colleges were participating in the counselling process.
According to the Minister, 15 colleges had opted out of the admission process. Anna University has also reduced as many as 270 seats in its colleges and departments.
Counselling to start
Counselling will begin on June 25, with special category candidates being called first. On June 25, counselling will be held for differently-abled candidates; on June 26, for wards of ex-servicemen; and on June 27, for sportspersons.
Counselling for the vocational stream will be held from June 26 to 28. These will be in-person counselling at the Central Polytechnic College in Taramani. Counselling for general category candidates will be held from July 3 to 28.
Candidates may check their details on the website of the Directorate of Technical Education. If they notice errors in the application forms, they may contact the following numbers: 044-22350523/27/29, in addition to 044-22351014/15.
The DoTE website crashed soon after the release of the merit list. It took over an hour for the website to be functional.
