The commencement of online registration and filing of applications had started on a brisk note from July 15 with more than 1.6 lakh candidates enrolling for various streams. Even uploading of original certificates and assigning random numbers to the students took place as per the schedule.

In the tentative schedule, the Directorate of Technical Education (DoTE), which conducts engineering admissions, had announced that the rank list would be published on September 7 and the counselling will commence from September 17.

However, the publication of the merit list was postponed twice to September 17 and September 25 respectively with DoTE pointing out that several students in the rural areas could not upload their certificates online. Though there is no official communique from the government with regard to the postponement till Friday, a senior official from the D0TE told DT Next that the rank list is expected to be released on September 28.

“Still many students requested the government that they require some more time to upload their certificates,” he said adding that similarly, due to delay in the NEET results, publishing merit list has also been deferred.

With DoTE rescheduling the release, the new admission process is expected to be further delayed even as deemed universities across the State have already completed the fresher’s enrollment procedures and have started several online induction programmes.

“Soon after releasing the merit list on September 7 as per the original plan, the much-awaited counselling should have started on September 17 and completed by October 15. By looking into the current scenario, the whole counselling process would be completed only by November,” S Krishna Kumar, who is interested in pursuing an Electrical and Electronics Engineering course, said.

Krishna Kumar, one of the students who could not offer to pay high fees by enrolling in the deemed to be universities, said the delay in counselling would increase academic loss. Echoing similar views of Krishna Kumar, Bala Vigneshwaran, another student enrolled to do Mechanical Engineering, said that further delay in releasing the merit list would increase the stress among students, who are eagerly waiting to enter the colleges.