Binita Jaiswal By Express News Service CHENNAI: Engineering colleges in the State are in for tough times as they will be struggling to fill their seats this year. The third round of counselling for Tamil Nadu Engineering Admission (TNEA) has concluded and over 1.21 lakh seats are still lying vacant. According to TNEA committee officials, the third round of counselling ended on Monday. So far, only 46,213 seats have been filled out of 1,67,652 seats available in government, government-aided and private engineering colleges in the State. According to figures provided by TNEA committee, as many as 1,21,439 seats are vacant in engineering colleges. “Only 27.5 per cent of the seats have been filled in engineering colleges so far. With each passing year, the situation is turning from bad to worse for us. It will be difficult for engineering colleges to manage the affairs,” said a senior administrative official of a private college. The figures reveal that at least 1,51,574 seats are available in private engineering colleges in the State, of which only 34,740 seats have been filled so far. Even in reputed government institutions like Anna University’s constituent colleges and regional campuses, 3,685 seats are lying vacant out of 8,840 available seats. However, TNEA committee officials are hopeful they will be able to fill in 30,000 more seats with fourth round of counselling and supplementary counselling. “Over 37,000 students will be called for fourth round of counselling while we are expecting at least 6,000 students will participate in the supplementary counselling. The number of admissions will certainly improve,” said TNEA committeee secretary, T Purushothaman. Notably, in the three rounds, over 64,000 students were called for counselling while in the fourth round students securing rank from 64,094 to 1,01,692 will participate.

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