Medical UG admissions stalled after SC’s order

Medical UG admissions stalled after SC’s order

PUNE: Admissions to the undergraduate (UG) medical courses have been temporarily suspended. 

The Supreme Court (SC) has issued a ‘status quo’ order for admissions under the National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test (NEET-UG) 2019 in Maharashtra.

The decision has affected over 8,000 UG candidates of MBBS and BDS streams in the State. 

A few candidates belonging to the Scheduled Tribe (ST) category had approached the Bombay High Court (HC) last month on the issue of caste validity certificate.

According to an official, the scrutiny committee had rejected caste validity certificates of some candidates, after which they approached the HC, but the court disposed of the petition immediately. 

They then appealed to the SC. The SC has directed the Chief Justice of the HC to constitute a bench to hear the matter and assign the cases so that uniformity is maintained. All the cases will be heard at the principal bench in Mumbai, said the SC.

ADMISSIONS STALLED
As per the SC order, the State Common Entrance Test (CET) Cell has postponed admissions till further notice from the SC. The cell stated it is seeking some clarifications on the SC order.

“Status quo means we have to stop the existing admission process of all candidates until the decision is made by the Bombay HC,” said Commissioner and Competent Authority of State CET Cell Anand Rayate.

According to the SC order, the Bombay HC will receive all the petitions by August 16. Then the dates of hearing will be declared and the proceedings are likely to begin next week, stated Rayate. 

“We have completed two rounds till now. But due to status quo order, other admissions have got stuck now. If the status quo remains till August 30, it will be difficult to complete the mop-up round and further admission process within eight days from date of judgement,” said Rayate.

Only those candidates whose certificates were approved by HC were given admissions in the following round for MBBS and BDS. Rest of the candidates were eligible for BAMS course and were accordingly given admissions.

NUMBER OF SEATS AVAILABLE
The ST category has 276 seats reserved for MBBS and BDS in government colleges with 258 seats in 

MBBS and 18 seats in BDS. Whereas, private colleges consist of 150 seats which include 71 MBBS seats and 79 BDS seats.

There are 8,427 seats for MBBS and BDS in government and private medical colleges across the State. Out of these 5,792 seats are for MBBS and 2,635 seats are for BDS. “If any candidate of a particular reservation category doesn’t report at the centre, then the seat is passed on to other reservation category, till it is left for open category,” said Rayate.

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