Seats are available in 11 government engineering colleges, three government-aided engineering colleges, three central government institutions, four university departments and 16 constituent colleges of Anna University, and 394 self financing colleges.
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Anna University has said that a total of 2,56,366 engineering seats at the undergraduate level will be available across institutions in Tamil Nadu this year, including management quota seats.This will include seats in 11 government engineering colleges, three government-aided engineering colleges, three central government institutions, four university departments and 16 constituent colleges of Anna University, and 394 self financing colleges.After the inspection committee of Centre for Affiliation of Institutions (CAI) submitted its report last week, the seat matrix for the Tamil Nadu Engineering Admissions (TNEA) 2026 was released by the committee paving the way for the start of the counselling process on Monday.Seven new self-financing colleges and two off-campus centres of affiliated engineering colleges have been given affiliation this year. On the other hand, intake of students in 10 engineering colleges has been stopped since the inspection committee found that these colleges did not satisfy norms, sources said. Besides, certain departments in 44 other colleges have been denied permission to admit students for failing to comply with regulatory norms.This meant that over 8,000 seats went abegging this year, with 4,500 of them belong to the various departments in these 44 colleges. Shorftall in the number of faculty members, lack of infrastructure and library facilities, or even sports facilities have been found to be the most common reason for denial of affiliation, sources added.Meanwhile, the ‘ghost faculty’ issue may well have been put to rest for good after certain reforms were implemented this year during the inspections. “Ghost faculty have been completely eliminated,” said a confident V. Kumaresan, Registrar-in-charge, Anna University. “We introduced a two-step Aadhaar-based biometric authentication system for the faculty and provided them with a unique number, a Faculty Identification Number or FIN,” he maintained.Explaining, he noted that the self-financing institutions were to on-board their faculty members on the CAI web portal using Aadhaar-based biometrics and a geo-tagged photograph. During inspection, the team would once again carry out an Aadhaar-based authentication of the faculty member. If a faculty member is to resign from one college and join another, both institutions will have to send in requests to Anna University for updating the records on the portal. The FIN will be deleted if the faculty member quits the field of teaching or retires.The portal was updated by the National Informatics Centre while for the Aadhaar-based authentication, the University collaborated with the Tamil Nadu e-Governance Agency. There are a little over 43,000 faculty members in the 394 self-financing engineering colleges in the State. Published - July 14, 2026 12:05 am IST
