With no expertise or experience, DOTE grapples with TNEA counselling

The massive exercise to conduct counselling for engineering college admissions in the State, now taken up by the Department of Technical Education (DoTE) after a gap of two decades, is facing numerous hiccups, with several students complaining that the process is not as smooth as it was in the past. The department had taken up the counselling after Anna University refused to conduct it this year.

Candidates seeking engineering admissions complain that the staff available in the student’s resource centre were not helpful during the online registration process. “The persons appointed in the centre don’t have the information about online registration. When I went to register, the staff took more than the stipulated time to register my application,” T Saravana Kumar from Tambaram, one of the applicants, told DT Next.

Similarly, another student K Vignesh from Pammal, who also registered for engineering admissions through DoTE, said the official he met at the facilitation centre did not know about the payment details. “I had to contact other officials at the DoTE office to know about the amount to be paid,” he said. He added that the inability of the staff at the students’ facilitation centre to communicate properly posed a serious difficulty for them.

A student, seeking anonymity, said that the facilitation centre staff were slow in typewriting, due to which the registration process remained slow. “I saw at least one computer that was not working properly,” she added.

The department has started online registration for engineering admissions, but the counselling process involving more than one lakh students will prove to be a difficult task for the State government says experts.

In contrast, Anna University, which has been conducting counselling till last year, is equipped with a team of experts who take care of the admission process. Sources from the university said that the software developed by the institution to allocate engineering seats during counselling was not given to DoTE.

A senior official from the Higher Education Department admitted that as DoTE could not handle the counselling process due to lack of manpower, it has approached the National Informatics Centre for help.

For the last 22 years, Anna University has been conducting engineering admissions through single-window counselling, which was widely considered efficient by academicians and parents. However, with DoTE taking up the task, academicians have warned that thousands of students would be affected if there was any technical issue in the online counselling.

“Online registration is relatively easy as students submit their details through a web portal. The difficulty would begin once the counselling process starts. The software plays a major role in allocating random numbers and seats to the students,” a senior administration staff from Anna University said.

According to him, the DoTE has not undertaken a trial run of the software that is available with it. “A test run is very useful to remove all the bugs in the software before putting it to use,” he added.

More than 500 staff and experts were involved when Anna University conducted counselling. In addition, ex-professors and teaching staff also participated in the counselling. In addition, information centres for students were set up in all the districts, manned by experts to help the students, especially those in rural areas.

In comparison, the DoTE lacks staff to undertake this, which is said to be a serious setback. Also, the staff not being trained for conducting counselling is expected to create issues in the coming days. A senior official from DoTE admitted that staff should have been trained specially to handle the students who come for certificate verification. “The students will raise lots of doubts and it is important to the staff to clear it,” the official added.

The university ruled out conducting counselling with the newly constituted Tamil Nadu Engineering Admission (TNEA) committee. Vice Chancellor MK Surappa had already resigned as chairman of the TNEA committee following row over amendments of the committee by the Higher Education Department to include DoTE officials in the panel.

“Unless the government changes the committee, Anna University will not conduct counselling,” said an official in the administration wing of the institution. He said the Vice Chancellor was particular that the government should not interfere with the counselling process, as it would affect the students. “He is not willing to send the experts to help DoTE in the counselling process,” the official added.

Meanwhile, the initiative by DoTE to outsource the counselling process has also not gone well with the academic community. “If the counselling is privatised, there will not be any transparency in the admissions. Corruption will take place,” former Vice Chancellor E Balagurusamy said. According to him, there would be large-scale political interference if the counselling process is entrusted to private parties.