Chaos delays resumed counselling

The result was that the counselling session at NMKRV college that was scheduled to begin at 8 am could commence only at 4 pm, and went on late into the night.

At the start of the day, the counselling session was rocked by allegations by several candidates and parents that some students were blocking the seats. This led to chaos and the police had to intervene to separate the students and parents.

Following this, some candidates along with student activist groups such as the ABVP pointed out mistakes in the seat matrix that was produced by Comed-K. As per the agreement, the seats were supposed to be shared in the ratio of 33 per cent, 42 per cent, and 25 per cent for state government, Comed-K, and NRI/institutional preference respectively. On Wednesday, Comed-K worked out a revised seat matrix, which tried to ensure the said percentage in pre-clinical, para-clinical and clinical subjects.

However, candidates were still unhappy with this revised seat matrix. Comed-K Executive Secretary Dr S Kumar said that after the students pointed out that the ratio was not maintained in individual subjects, they tried to correct it. “We did not have the authority to make the changes, so we had to call in the director of Medical Education to make the necessary corrections. That delayed the commencement of the counselling process which finally began at 4 pm”.

While six rounds of counselling were scheduled to conclude by 5 pm on Thursday, only one round had been completed by 7 pm. Dr Kumar said that they had requested the candidates to stay late in the night for counselling, and they would complete the process by Friday. “Under the Supreme Court guidelines, we have to complete the first round of counselling by April 15 and the second round by April 25”, he said.

Additional fee

Some students also raised complaints of medical and dental colleges charging additional fee.

“The Association has taken a decision that no college can charge fee beyond that notified by the State government and the Rajiv Gandhi University of Health Sciences”, said Kumar. If any college charges additional fee, their action will brought to the notice of the appropriate authorities,” he added.

The PGET counselling has been rocked by allegations of seat blocking by candidates.

Allegations were raised that colleges were paying students to take up seats in the colleges during counselling, and then surrendering them after the process was concluded. This led to the counselling scheduled on April 12 to be called off.

On Wednesday, Comed-K announced a series of steps to check seat blocking. Students who had already taken a seat in Rajiv Gandhi University, or All India counselling, or at any deemed university, will have to file an affidavit to the effect that he/she will surrender that seat. The student will have to produce a surrender certificate along with all the originals on or before 4 pm of April 19 at the Comed-K office. On failing to do so, the provisionally allotted seat will get automatically cancelled and will be added to the pool of seats to be offered in the next round of counselling by Comed-K.