Centre orders joint counselling for MBBS, BDS seats in state

Balwant Garg

Tribune News Service

Faridkot, August 16

The Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare today conveyed to the Department of Medical Education and Research, Punjab, that the state government would conduct combined counselling for all medical and dental colleges, including deemed universities.

This has put speculations to rest about separate counselling by three medical universities for admission to MBBS and BDS courses in the state.

For the last two months, medical aspirants were a confused lot as three medical universities in the state — Baba Farid University of Health Sciences (BFUHS), Adesh Medical University and Sri Guru Ram Das Medical College (SGRDMC) — were making claims of conducting separate counselling.

Some private dental colleges were demanding the right to fill BDS seats on their own.

After it was granted the status of an independent medical university last month, SGRDMC, like Adesh Medical University, was making a claim to conduct its own counselling to fill 150 MBBS seats. Meanwhile, BFUHS was claiming to fill all MBBS and BDS seats after declaration of the result of PMET and NEET.

In its prospectus for the MBBS entrance test, the SGRDMC had claimed that the college would hold admissions on its own.

However as per the Punjab Government notification issued for PMET-2016, counselling for government quota seats in SGRDMC was to be conducted by BFUHS.

Ending this confusion, the Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare conveyed to the Department of Medical Education and Research, Punjab, that after going through the matter with the Law Ministry, it has been decided that the state government might preferably go for combined counselling for MBBS/BDS courses in all medical and dental colleges, including deemed universities.

The Union ministry has even announced the schedule for counselling. The first round will be held from September 3 to 5. The second round will be from September 21 to 23. The last date for the students of first counselling to join the allotted seat is September 8 and for the second-round students, the last date to join the colleges is September 26, said Amit Biswas, under secretary, Ministry of Health and Family Welfare.

The academic session will commence on September 3 and the last date to admit a student against a vacancy in a medical and dental college is September 30.

PMET topper gets 29th rank in NEET

Faridkot’s Lovish Gupta, who scored the highest marks in the Punjab Pre-Medical Entrance Test (PMET-2016), has got 29th all-India rank in NEET. The CBSE declared the joint result of NEET-1 and NEET-2 on Tuesday.