Notice ordered on PILs seeking offline counselling

CHENNAI: A vacation bench of the Madras High Court has ordered notice to the Higher Education Department and Anna University on PILs praying for a direction to them to admit students in engineering courses through the hitherto adopted practice of manual counselling too.

A bench of Justices V Bharathidasan and N Seshasayee, before which the PIL petitions from DMK MLA C V M P Ezhilarasan of Kancheepuram and advocate P Ponpandian came up on Thursday, issued notices returnable by a week.

The petitioners claimed that the new online mode of counselling and admission process  would be disadvantageous to students in rural areas. Students from rural parts of the State lack English and computer knowledge to apply and attend counselling online. There are no facilities in many parts of the State to file applications, scan relevant documents and upload them online. The entire admission process would take at least four months to complete, the petitioners said.