Dear Harini,

Based on previous year's cut-offs it can be said that with your CMR 832 Rank you can't get preferred course B.Ftech, as you said you belong to General Category.

The previous year's cut-offs for B.Ftech course in NIFT Chennai are given below.

Category: General Category

2019 Closing Rank - 310

2018 Closing Rank - 332

But you have good chances of getting other courses like Textile Designing, Apparal Designing, Knitwear, Leather Designing etc as their cutoff is between 900 to 1800. I d on't think so you can change your caste at this point of time because you already got ranks. But you can try for it by contacting helpdesk team given in the official website.

For more information about NIFT cut-offs go through below mentioned link.

https://design.careers360.com/articles/nift-cutoff

Hope this helps.

All The Best!!