Private Medical Colleges in a Fix; Less than 50% MBBS Seats Taken

Supreme Court’s decision of conducting a centralised counselling for MBBS and BDS courses is not working in favour of deemed universities and private medical colleges. The third counselling on the basis of NEET 2017 has been concluded on August 24, 2017, yet more than 50% MBBS seats and close to 85% dental seats remain vacant.

The final round of counselling to fill the vacant seats will be started from August 28 after 5 pm and will be concluded on August 31. Private institutes and deemed universities fear that they will not get takers for majority of the seats as the centralised counselling doesn’t permit these colleges to admit students on their own.

According to reports, one-third of the 15% all-India quota seats in government colleges also remain vacant. However, government colleges will get an opportunity to fill these seats as the all-India seats that remain vacant will be transferred to the state.

The Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS), the body responsible for conducting centralised counselling, will seek legal advice on how to resolve the issue of unfilled seats.

Another aspect that is troubling private and deemed medical institutes is the new matrix of counselling that binds these institutes to follow the DGHS list even after the final seat transfer.

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Head of a private medical college in Karnataka talked about the admission crisis and said that only 89 of the 170 general MBBS seats have been filled. The college has a total of 200 MBBS seats and out of these 30 are reserved for NRIs. Only one seat has been filled under the NRI category, he added.

Few of the deemed universities have not recorded any admissions in MBBS programmes so far. The DGHS will release a list of 100 potential candidates for every 10 vacant seats. Since the similar procedure was followed in the first three rounds of counselling, the colleges argue that this process will not help in filling more than 10% seats.

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Till 2016, the deemed universities had the authority to fill up their own seats. However, in 2017, the counselling has been conducted according to the guidelines of the Supreme Court. A DGHS Official added that there is no solution to fill up these vacant seats, therefore, they are now seeking legal advice.