Lakhs of vacant engineering seats in Andhra Engineering colleges

Over two lakh engineering seats are expected to remain unfilled in Andhra Pradesh during the academic year 2013-14. At the end of  EAMCET certificate verification on Friday just 1.27 lakh students out of a total of 2.17 lakh, who qualified for EAMCET, turned up to verify their certificates.

The state has a total of 3.38 lakh seats. Of this, 2.37 lakh seats are convener quota (merit list) and 1.01 lakh are management quota seats.

State government has extended the deadline to September 2 for the strike-stricken Seemandhra students.  Students will be allowed to select the colleges of their choice on September 3. Allotment of seats will be on September 18 and engineering classes will start from September 23.

So many vacant seats will result in the closure of several tech colleges in the state. A look at the number of colleges affiliated to the three Jawaharlal Nehru Technological Universities, to which 90% of the engineering colleges in the state are affiliated, reveal that colleges from the Telangana region will be worst hit by this deficit of students.

Statistics show that only 61,000 students from the region, this year, have attended counselling for admissions to 313 engineering colleges (affiliated to JNTU-H), with a total of 1.65 lakh seats. Already, nine colleges from the region have closed down post approvals from the All India Council of Technical Education (AICTE).

While the Andhra region (JNTU-K) has 201 colleges with 1.01 lakh seats, the Rayalaseema region (JNTU-Anantapur) has 118 engineering colleges with 58,290 seats. Just 61,200 students turned up for certificate verification from this region.

Sources said colleges that have not found many aspirants in the last two years are expected to remain shut without official permissions this year.

“Some colleges where just a handful of students take admission through counselling are expected to shift their students to other colleges for classroom lessons. Meanwhile, these colleges will remain shut to avoid payment of salaries to its teaching and non-teaching staff," said a management head on condition of anonymity.

A total of 40 such colleges are expected to remain shut in the Telangana region, a source said. While the count in the Andhra belt is 20, in the Rayalaseema region 10 such colleges would remain shut. It is also likely that these colleges in the future would write to AICTE for official closure. In 2012, a total of 10 colleges registered zero admission.