TS Eamcet counselling schedule draws flak
The counselling process for the TS Eamcet starts on Friday amid criticism from students, parents and academics. Students say Eamcet counselling should be postponed till the process is completed for JEE.
Parents alleged that the TS government was conducting counselling ahead of the JEE to fill the seats in engineering colleges, as was done in AP. JEE admissions start mid-June and the first two rounds end in the first week of July, but first phase of TS Eamcet counselling will begin on Friday.
Mr T.V. Gautham, father of an engineering aspirant, told this newspaper, “My son scored good ranks in both the JEE and TS Eamcet. He can secure a seat in an NITs with the JEE rank, and a seat in JNTU-H with the state rank. Till last year, the counselling was first conducted for IITs and NITs which was followed by counselling in the state.”
He said the government this year was conducting Eamcet counselling first, due to which students would be forced to take the admissions in the state colleges as they will be unsure of their position in the JEE counselling.
“We will be producing our certificates for verification and they will take a minimum of 10 days to process them. Candidates will be rejected by the JEE board if they don’t produce certificates. We have approched the Eamcet convener and they said they said their job gets done once they announce the ranks.”
IIT aspirant T. Ashruth, ranked 220 in Eamcet and 4,290 in JEE, said, “The Joint Seat Allocation Authority (JOSA) (of the JEE) asks us to produce our original certificates within two or three days and will disqualify us if we unable to do so. State colleges take a minimum of 10 days to return the certificates once we submit them during counselling.”
Asked about the problem, Prof. T. Papi Reddy, chairman, TS Council of Higher Education, said the JOSA always conducts five or six rounds of counselling. “Only the dates of the first and second rounds clash with Eamcet.”
“It is not a problem as students can cancel the admissions in Eamcet and join JEE admissions if they qualify. Certificate verification for Eamcet starts from Friday and we are sure students will not face any problem because of the dates.”