No takers for 2,000 engineering seats

Nearly 2,000 seats in the engineering colleges of the state have been found vacant after the first round of counselling,because of the slowdown and the mushrooming of more and more engineering colleges.

Nearly 2,000 seats in the engineering colleges of the state have been found vacant after the first round of counselling,because of the slowdown and the mushrooming of more and more engineering colleges.

Sources in the Central Selection Committee,a body which conducts the counselling for engineering seats,have corroborated this.

On Thursday,students ranked between 52,801to 60,000 were asked to appear. The first phase of counselling had started on July 5 and ended today.

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This year,the Joint Entrance Examination (JEE) Board came up with a merit list of 60,000 students to fill about 24,000 seats in the 60 engineering colleges in the state.

Even with the mammoth merit list,the commission will have to arrange for a second counselling session in the month of August for the students who have registered themselves in the waiting list. This speaks volumes about the inclination of students in taking up the course in private engineering colleges.

Of the 60 engineering colleges only six along with two universities are under the state government.

This year due to a slowdown in the IT sector,the students are not keen to take up the related streams in various engineering colleges.

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This year there has been a good demand for the seats in the core sector. However,not much enthusiasm was seen in the students while opting for IT and other related disciplines, said Siddhartha Dutta,chairman of the JEE board.

Sources,meanwhile,said many students are also opting for institutions near the city which have a fairly decent placement record.

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