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The Supreme Court of India has refused to extend the time span for counselling of post-graduate medical courses. It has stricly asked the institutions to stick by the time schedule approved by the court.
There was a request to extend the counselling span for admission to the different postgraduate medical courses in various deemed universities of the country which was refused by the Supreme Court of India on friday. The plea was done with the hope of filling up around 603 seats which are vacant in both private and government medical colleges. The highest judiciary of the nation exclaimed that extending the time span for counselling will be like “opening a pandora’s box”.
A vacation bench of justices including Surya Kant and Deepak Gupta said after refusing the plea that no extension can be granted merely to fill-up the vacant seats. The request was put forward by the Education Promotion Society of India as there are around 1000 seats in the educational institutions which are lying vacant.
Moreover, the court said that a particular schedule must be maintained regarding the counselling of the shortlisted candidates. Otherwise the entire purpose of fixing a time schedule will go in vain. There are three major rounds of counselling for the postgraduate medical courses namely the first round, second round and the mop-up round. The last date for completion of the mop-up round was 31st May 2019. The jury bench said that it cannot be helped if the seats remain vacant even after the completion of the mop-up round. It is also said that vacancy of seats can never be a justification for extending the time period for counselling.
The court also pointed that out of the 603 vacant seats only 31 are in clinical courses. Rest of the seats which is almost 95% of the total number is vacant non-clinical subjects. The reason behind being most of the graduate doctors not wanting to do their post graduation in several non-clinical offered courses. Maninder Singh, who is the lawyer appearing for the society exclaimed that these medical institutions spends a huge amount of money in the infrastructure. The lawyer also pointed out the shortage of doctors in India and how is this fact directly related to the vacancy of seats.
On concluding notes the jury bench said that a strict schedule as approved by the court must be maintained by the institutions offering medical courses. The result should be declared by the end of January followed by first round of counselling for All India Quota Seats and State Counselling within 24th March and 5th April respectively. Second round of counselling for the deemed Central Universities should be completed by 12th April and for State institutions by 26th April. Mop up round of counselling for the Central and the State institutes has to be completed by 8th and 22nd of May consecutively.
