Defending its decision to do away with Common Entrance Test (CET) for admission into professional courses, Tamil Nadu government said the enrolment of rural students into engineering courses has gone up by more than 10 percent since it was scrapped.

"The percentage of rural students admitted into engineering courses during 2005 and 2006 when the Common Entrance Test was conducted, has been 56.72 per cent and 58.26 per cent respectively...And this trend was reversed after the abolition of CET. The percentage goes to 68.79 per cent in 2011," Tamil Nadu Higher Education Minister P Palaniappan said at the state education ministers conference in Delhi on Wednesday.

Holding that a majority of people in the state considered CET an "additional and unnecessary burden" on a large number of students hoping for admission into professional courses, he said the system resulted in severe disadvantages to students belonging to rural, Tamil medium and underprivileged categories.

"Therefore, government of Tamil Nadu under the Chief Minister is not in favour of Common Entrance Test (CET)," he said.