Nearly 500 medical college seats in specialty courses across the country remains vacant, seeking a reversal in it’s earlier verdict, the Union Health Ministry today is to appeal to the Supreme Court to seek permission to hold counseling to fill up the vacancy.
The OC, in a letter to the MCI and the director general of health services (DGHS), said it is in favor of filling up the vacant seats after holding one extra round of counseling.
According to the HT report, entrance in surgery (MCh) and medicine (DM) courses is determined on the basis of NEET or National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET) results.
The SC guideline has clearly mentioned that the last date to finish admission was August 31, 2017, but when it was observed that almost 700 out of 2,000 medical seats remained vacant post the last date, the apex court decided to extend the date to September 14 on the ministry’s request.
It must be noted that more than 600 students opted for seats in the extended counseling session, but around 400 of these students did not report to the college.
A source in the ministry also informed HT that this was the first year that the DGHS had held a centralized counseling, thus colleges in many states did not want to surrender all their seats. When they were ready to yield, the last date of admission had already passed.
“Except 69 seats, we had filled up all seats. But a lot of non-serious candidates, who had participated in the counseling, didn’t report to the colleges and the vacancy shot up to over 500,” he told HT.
In view of this, the ministry from next year might introduce strict measures to check withdrawal of admission post seat allotment, most probably by introducing some kind of a lock-in fee.
He also suggested that depositing first year’s fee at the time of seat allotment might be made mandatory so that a candidate cannot withdraw so easily.
With the OC’s recommendation, it would be interesting to see what the MCI has to say in court today when the hearing for the same will take place.
The MCI had earlier cited indiscipline among colleges and candidates as a major reason for opposing the extension of the counseling dates.
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