Filling up of vacant PG medical seats: SC seeks reply

A group of deemed universities on Tuesday approached the Supreme Court seeking a direction to the Union government to extend counselling till June 17 for admission to over 500 seats, which remained vacant in Post Graduate medical courses.

A bench of Justices Indira Banerjee and Ajay Rastogi asked the Directorate General of Health Services of the central government to respond to a petition filed by Education Promotion Society of India, a registered group of 1354 educational institutions, by Wednesday.

Senior advocate Maninder Singh and advocate Devashish Baruka contended that the medical institutions were spending huge money for creating infrastructure for providing quality education and waste of each seat was detrimental to their interest as well as those of students.

The government has been making substantial efforts to increase the number of Post Graduate seats and on the other hand, many seats go vacant due to certain technical and other issues despite best efforts on the part of the concerned colleges.

“The medical colleges/ deemed universities are neither praying for enhancement or increase in number of seats nor for lowering of any parameters in order to accommodate additional students. The only prayer is for extension of time for stray vacancy round so that the meritorious students who are already NEET qualified and are already available in the wait list provided by the DGHS, are given another opportunity to join a PG course,” their petition stated.

Among the institutions, the petitioner pointed out 11 % seats in Kaher's J N Medical College Belagavi and 28% in K S Hegde Medical Academy, Mangalore were available for filling up.

“The situation can be rectified if one last chance for counselling for stray vacancy round was granted from May 31 to June 17 as was done in the case of Maharashtra after scrapping of 10 % economically weaker sections quota,” it said.