Plea against 2nd phase of engg counselling dismissed

The Madras High Court on Friday dismissed a petition challenging the Tamil Nadu Higher Education Department’s order conducting the second phase of counselling for admitting students for the vacant seats in engineering colleges across the state.

Justice M Dhandapani allowed the state to conduct the second phase of counselling on dismissing the petition filed by the Consortium of Self-Financing Professional Arts and Science Colleges in Tamil Nadu represented by its secretary P Selvaraj.

The petitioner said that as per AICTE directions the four rounds of counselling for engineering admissions in the state were completed on October 14, 2021 and another round of counselling was conducted for lapsed seats on October 24.

It is noted that 70,000 seats are vacant out of 1.51 lakh seats in the state. Selvaraj further submitted the government had passed an order dated November 25, 2021 to conduct the second phase of Tamil Nadu Engineering Admissions (TNEA) which is arbitrary and illegal. “The order allows students who have already registered and admitted to fill the vacancies in engineering colleges. Therefore, the students already admitted to the colleges would discontinue and attend fresh counselling. This would cause grave prejudice and hardship to the petitioner’s association members,” the counsel for the petitioner submitted.

The petitioner further said that the order is against the calendar prescribed by the AICTE that any student to withdraw from the college with full fees is November 25, 2021. “After that particular date, the government ought not to create one more opportunity to the students who is in a college to withdraw and join any other college,” the petitioner submitted.

The petitioner said that the government had failed to communicate the decision to the stakeholder colleges before passing the GO.

Responding to the submissions by the petitioner, R Shunmugasundaram, Advocate General contended that the government had sent a communication to the AICTE regarding the decision of the state to conduct the second phase of counselling. “Since more seats are vacant in several colleges, we have decided to conduct second phase counselling considering the welfare of the students. A request has also been sent to the AICTE for conducting the second phase of counselling till the end of December 2021,” the AG submitted.

On recording the submissions by the AG, the judge dismissed the petition by Selvaraj.