Punjab scraps medical entrance test for NRIs

Balwant Garg

Tribune News Service

Faridkot, March 21

The Punjab Medical Education Department today abolished the mandatory Punjab Medical Entrance Test (PMET) for NRI students aspiring to pursue MBBS and BDS courses from any of the 21 medical and dental colleges in the state.

There are 102 MBBS and 169 BDS seats for NRIs in Punjab. An NRI student now needs to qualify Class XII or an equivalent examination with physics, chemistry and biology subjects, reads the notification issued by the department.

Admission for NRI candidates shall be based on merit in the qualifying examination, according to the notification.

Baba Farid University of Health Sciences (BFUHS) will conduct PMET-2016 on May 15. However, NRI candidates need not appear in this test.

So far, qualifying the entrance exam was a must for all candidates, including NRIs. By relaxing the norms, the government is aiming to fill the 271 NRI-quota seats as majority of these seats remained vacant in recent years. All such vacant seats had been merged in the general category, causing financial losses to medical colleges.

For an NRI candidate, the total fee is $1,10,000 for the MBBS course. The charges for the BDS course would be $44,000. Earlier, every NRI candidate had to get minimum 50 per cent marks in PMET to be eligible for admission.

The department has given another benefit to private medical colleges in terms of hiked fee for management quota and government quota seats.

For the four-and-a-half-year MBBS course, while a student in a government college has to pay fee for that duration, students in private medical colleges have to pay the five-year fee for the course.

The full fee for the MBBS course in a government medical college is Rs 4.4 lakh against Rs 40.29 lakh for a management quota seat and Rs 13.42 lakh for a government quota seat in a private medical college.