Medical admissions: All-college talks fail, impasse continues

BATHINDA:The Department of Medical Education and Research (DMER), Punjab, today failed to take a decision about starting the counselling process for post graduate courses as the Christian Medical College (CMC), Ludhiana, declined to provide the matrix of number of seats available for different categories at an all-college meet today.

Balwant Garg

Tribune News Service

Bathinda, April 5

The Department of Medical Education and Research (DMER), Punjab, today failed to take a decision about starting the counselling process for post graduate courses as the Christian Medical College (CMC), Ludhiana, declined to provide the matrix of number of seats available for different categories at an all-college meet today.

The counseling is to be held to fill about 500 MD, MS and MDS seats in 15 medical and dental colleges in the state but the CMC has not provided the number of seats it has in Master of Surgery (MS) and Doctor of Medicine (MD) programmes.

The CMC is demanding to conduct a separate and independent counselling for its post graduate (PG) seats. After the Punjab Government turned down this demand, the college moved the Supreme Court and the next date for hearing in the case is April 20.

As the DMER is facing difficulty in adhering to the Supreme Court and Medical Council of India (MCI) mandated time schedule for conducting the counseling, the first round of which was to start on April 4, the Department had convened a meeting of all medical colleges today.

In this meeting, the CMC declined to provide the matrix of number of PG seats available for different categories till the decision by the Supreme Court. The matrix of PG seats in all medical and dental colleges is necessary to start the counselling.

Sources said the CMC authorities told the DMER that the procedure of its counselling was different than the counselling to be conducted by Baba Farid University of Health Sciences (BFUHS). So, the CMC will provide its matrix of number of seats after a decision by the Supreme Court. So far, the DMC is conducting its own counselling for all under graduate (UG) and PG courses.

As per the Supreme Court given time schedule for completing the admission process for PG medical courses, the first round of counselling/ admission was to start on April 4 and it should be complete by April 15.

Though the Supreme Court has not stayed the counseling but in absence of seat matrix from CMC, the BFUHS is not able to start the counselling, wanting a complete list of total PG seats in the state.

“We are trying to sort out the issue as the counselling has to be conducted as per the Supreme Court and MCI given schedule,” said Dr Sujata Shama, director, DRME, Punjab.

As per the Apex court’s schedule, all selected candidates have to report to their allotted colleges by April 22 and the academic session is to begin on May 1.

Earlier, the BFUHS was to start counselling on March 18 but it was postponed after CMC challenged the combined counselling.

On the basis of an All-India National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test (NEET-2017), for the first time, BFUHS is conducting a combined counseling to fill state quota seats in all medical colleges, private and deemed universities in the state.