Software Engineering

Hello Arun,
As you wish to pursue Masters in software engineering, the best option would be to appear for GATE entrance examination. GATE scores helps you to get admission into M.Tech in government colleges (IITs/NITs) and a number of top private institutes, which are cost effective as well.
Unfortunately, online registration for GATE 2017 is closed now and you can appear for GATE 2018. The online registration for the same will be available from October 2017. So, keep an eye on it.
However, for the current year, you can try appearing for the individual state examinations (OJEE for Odisha, WBUT for West Bengal, PGECET for Andhra Pradesh / Telangana, etc.) and see if you can score well and get into the top colleges of the respective state.

Both are equally good options. Nowadays, software engineering is more popular because of low investment and high returns. MNCs like Wipro, TCS, INFOSYS, Capegemini and Accenture are recruiting engineers a lot for software projects. Future aspects are more in software in the field of artificial intelligence and data sciences, which is again based on software.
These technologies are based on Orthodox software concepts and students good in Java, C and C+ will easily understand these technologies and grab jobs in these fields.
On the application part, hardware engineering also have opportunities in the fields of energy and power, automobiles, weapon industry and aeronautics. It needs technically sound and application oriented engineers. At the end, it depends individuals interest which field to choose.