PG Medical seats – no guarantees

Post-graduate medical seat aspirants could end up with seats at deemed universities which are determined to turn them away.

Following a recent Supreme Court judgment, the state Department of Medical Education is preparing a schedule for counselling and plans to complete the first round in the next few days. A High Court judgment had directed the state to take 25 per cent of all seats from deemed universities, but the universities are willing to concede only a few under-graduate seats and not post-graduate ones.

The department is adding the disputed seats to the numbers available in the first round of counselling. Such seats will be marked with a star.

“It is up to the students to take or reject such seats,” an official said.

Dr Sharan Prakash Patil, Minister for Medical Education, said, “We are starring such seats and will take legal opinion on this tangle.”

Counselling dates will be announced on Monday, he told Express. Seat aspirants are worried, though. “If they are really following the court’s directions, there should be no star-marked seats,” said Dr Raghavendra, a seat aspirant and petitioner in a High Court case. He said aspirants had met Patil on Thursday, but had not received any reassurance. “He kept saying he was not in a position to do anything,” he said.

Students say the government should take the seats into control and only then conduct counselling.  “The SC had given them a month to complete the process,” another aspirant said.

Date: May 3, 2014

Source: The New Indian Express