More than 2.5 lakh UG engineering posts are available in TN this academic year

Seats are available in 11 Government Technical Colleges, three State Aided Technical Colleges, three Central Government Institutions, four University Departments and 16 Anna University Basic Colleges and 394 Self-financing Colleges. | Photo credit: File photo

Anna University has said that a total of 2,56,366 undergraduate-level engineering seats, including management quota seats, will be available in Tamil Nadu institutions this year.

This will include seats in 11 government technical colleges, three state-aided technical colleges, three central government institutions, four university departments and 16 Anna University core colleges and 394 self-financing colleges.

After the Center for Affiliation of Institutions (CAI) inspection committee submitted its report last week, the committee released the seat matrix for Tamil Nadu Engineering Admissions (TNEA) 2026, paving the way for the counseling process to begin on Monday.

This year, seven new self-financing universities and two extracurricular centers of affiliated technical universities were affiliated. On the other hand, the admission of students in 10 technical colleges has been stopped as the inspection committee found that these colleges did not meet the norms, sources said. In addition, some departments in 44 other universities were denied permission to admit students for not complying with regulatory norms.

This meant that over 8,000 seats were cut this year, with 4,500 of them belonging to various departments of these 44 colleges. The most common reasons for denial of membership were found to be shortage in the number of faculty members, inadequate infrastructure and library facilities or even sports facilities, the sources added.

Meanwhile, the “ghost faculty” issue may have been removed for good after some reforms were made during inspections this year. “The ghost faculty has been completely eliminated,” said V. Kumaresan, head registrar, Anna University, confidently. “We have introduced an Aadhaar-based two-step biometric authentication system for the faculty and provided them with a unique number, Faculty Identification Number or FIN,” he said.

Explaining, he noted that the self-financing institutions should have enrolled their faculty members on the CAI web portal using Aadhaar-based biometrics and geo-tagged photo. During the inspection, the team would re-authenticate the faculty member based on Aadhaar. If a faculty member is to withdraw from one college and join another, both the institutions will have to send applications to Anna University to update the records in the portal. The FIN will be deleted if the faculty member leaves the teaching profession or retires.

The portal has been updated by the National Information Centre, while for Aadhaar-based authentication, the university has collaborated with the Tamil Nadu e-Governance Agency. There are a little over 43,000 faculty members in 394 self-financing technical colleges in the state.

Published – 14 Jul 2026 0:05 AM IST