Chennai: The Tamil Nadu state government lowered the eligibility marks for admission into B.E. and B.Tech. courses on Wednesday, giving in to the requests by self-financing engineering colleges.

The decision was made as due to the high eligibility marks, many seats for the B.E./B.Tech. courses in these colleges remained vacant.

From this academic session, a candidate from the Open Competition (OC) category will be eligible to join the engineering colleges with only a percentage of 50 percent in higher secondary examinations. Earlier, the eligibility percentage was 55 percent.

Candidates from the Backward Classes (BC) category would be able to gain admission into B.E./B.Tech courses with an eligibility percentage of only 45 percent, which was 50 percent before. Also, a student from the Most Backward Classes (MBC) category would be able to get admission with an aggregate percentage of 40 percent, which was 45 percent before.

For candidates who belong to the Scheduled Castes or Scheduled Tribes category, the eligibility percentage is only 35 percent.

The government had in 2008 decreased the eligibility criteria for several categories of candidates by 5 percent slabs. Higher education minister K. Ponmudy said that the government had received numerous representations from MLAs and owners and principals of private engineering colleges to decrease the eligibility criteria for admissions.

"We were told that several neighboring states have the eligibility criteria of only pass marks for admissions to such colleges, and that we should adopt the same measures for Tamil Nadu too," said Ponmudy.