The missing seats made up for almost 12% of the total 7,344 MBBS seats in government and private colleges under state’s counselling process.
Lack of coordination between multiple agencies year after year is adding to medical aspirants’ stress. There is no logical reason for agencies to wait till the eleventh hour to give nod. Students worried about losing seats in subsequent rounds, end up paying thousands of rupees to deemeduniversities to block seats in the first round which, in some cases, are not even reimbursed.
A circular issued by the cell by evening mentioned that these colleges did not get requisite permissions, and that these seats will be added in the subsequent rounds of admission. Many parents were agitated by the delay in approvals by the Maharashtra University of Health Sciences (MUHS) when the National Medical Commission (NMC) had given its nod two months ago.
Of the 1,000 seats, 900 were from seven medical colleges and 100 from a dental college. MGIMS-Wardha, a government college, also did not get approval and was excluded from the list. Parents went into panic mode as cut-offs at some colleges were higher than usual and as these seats were available in the seat matrix released on July 31. A CET cell official, however, said they got the approval list of colleges only on Thursday. The circular released by the cell said colleges need permissions from NMC and MUHS. “It was not in our hand, as we could not have allotted seats in colleges that do not have requisite permissions,” said the official.
While the NMC website shows the seats in nine colleges as approved, why should MUHS take so long, said parent representative Sudha Shenoy. The cut-off marks for government colleges have gone up from last year’s 564 to 587 this year, and for private colleges from 505 to 534, when it should have ideally gone down with the addition of two new colleges this year, she said.
Medical education counsellor Muzaffar Khan said that the fact that this has happened more than once – once in postgraduate admissions last year and once in undergraduate admissions – shows how negligent authorities are. Due to this, parents are forced to block seats in deemed colleges as all processes are happening simultaneously, said Khan.
Another parent representative, Brijesh Sutaria, questioned how one of the government college on the list, MGIMS-Wardha, was included in the all-India process, but was kept out from the state process. A college official said this year, NEET-UG results were also better and cut-offs would have risen anyway. “We are seeing for scores similar to last year, the corresponding ranks have jumped by almost by 7,000 positions,” he said. MUHS officials were not available for comment.
