Monday, Jul 05, 2010
Officials expect it to go smoothly despite general strike

Chennai: The first phase of the academic counselling for engineering admissions will start on Monday in the backdrop of a general strike announced by Opposition parties.

With only 570 candidates called on the first day, officials say that they expect it to go 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 allotment letters to 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 of the total 4,016 available seats were allotted to candidates.

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 had applied as first-generation graduates.