TNEA 2025: 400 Anna University colleges fail inspection; ‘exclude them from counselling’, civic group warns

Nearly 400 engineering colleges affiliated with Anna University were found lacking essential infrastructure for admission and academic operations, according to a recent inspection report that raised serious concerns days ahead of the Tamil Nadu Engineering Admission (TNEA 2025) process.

Anna University recently conducted physical inspections in around 460 colleges. The report revealed major deficiencies in nearly 400 colleges, including a lack of qualified faculty for specific departments, insufficient laboratory equipment, and absence of basic infrastructural facilities.

Over 86% of affiliated institutions — 400 out of 460 colleges — were found to have serious deficiencies. Arappor Iyakkam, a civic group, which previously exposed the irregularities in the affiliation process has demanded the inspection be video recorded to ensure transparency.

Though authorities have reportedly given these colleges time to rectify the issues, Arappor Iyakkam warned that allowing such colleges to admit students through the TNEA counselling process “would jeopardize the future and quality of education of thousands of students”. A total of 1,69,634 students registered for the TNEA 2025 within 10 days of opening the admission portal.

Impact on TNEA 2025 counselling

The TNEA 2025 rank list will be published on June 27 and the counselling process, involving choice filling of courses and colleges, is expected to begin from the first week of July. Although the deficient colleges were given time till June 24 to submit the compliance report, the civic group has flagged concerns on how this will impact thousands of students.

Once the TNEA BTech counselling begins, students will have to opt for colleges among these 460. If the university decides to disqualify or scrap affiliation to any of these colleges under scrutiny, it could disrupt the upcoming counselling process.

Students may also opt for colleges that are currently deemed unfit to impart engineering education.

Also read TNEA cut-off for BTech courses in Anna University colleges; category-wise closing ranks

Demands by Arappor Iyakkam

Arappor Iyakkam has made the following demands to ensure that admissions are not impacted.

• The government should publish a detailed list of colleges and deficiencies found.
• Engineering colleges found unfit should be excluded from this year’s admission counselling.
• Only institutions with the required infrastructure, laboratories, and qualified faculty must be permitted in the 2025–26 counselling round.

It also called on Tamil Nadu higher education minister K Ponmudi, secretary P Shankar IAS, technical education commissioner J Innocent Divya IAS, and Anna University registrar J Prakash to ensure strict action and transparency in public interest.