MBBS admissions: Punjab Govt amends NRI quota norms

Faridkot, August 20

The Department of Medical Education and Research (DMER) on Tuesday amended the eligibility criteria for MBBS seats under NRI quota. But this has not gone down well with the general category candidates. Reason: If any NRI seat remains vacant, it is converted to a general category seat in government colleges and in management category seat in private colleges. But after the amended criteria, very few NRI quota seats will be left vacant.

Out of total 1,550 MBBS seats in 10 medical colleges in the state, 183 seats are reserved for NRI candidates. A large number of NRI quota seats remained vacant in the past years and much to the joy of general category students, these seats were available to them.

Last year, 148 seats out of total 183 NRI quota MBBS seats remained vacant in the state and these were filled by the general category candidates. As many as 57 of these 148 seats were in four government medical colleges.

On August 9, the DMER had issued a notification on the pattern of past years, according to which NRIs or the children of NRIs, who originally belong to Punjab, were eligible for NRI quota seats as first preference. If the seats remain vacant, then the NRIs or the children of NRIs who belong to any part of India were eligible for these seats.

However on Tuesday, the DMER issued a modified notification widening the ambit of NRI definition for the purpose of admission on NRI quota seat. As per the modified notification, if a student is taken as a ward by some other nearest NRI relatives such as brother and sister of father, brother and sister of mother, father and mother of father, father and mother of mother and first degree parental and maternal cousins, such students may be considered for admission on NRI quota seat.

Priyank Bharati, secretary, DMER, said the partial amendment in the notification was made to attract maximum number of NRI students to the state medical institutions. Sources in the DMER revealed that the medical colleges, particularly the private medical institutions, were building pressure on the state government to modify the notification so that more and more seats could be filled under this category.

Money matters

• The conversion of NRI quota seats into general category was a big financial loss to the medical institutions. While full course fee for an MBBS NRI quota seat is $1.10 lakh (about ~93 lakh), the fee for general category seat is ~9.50 lakh in the government institutions and ~58.02 lakh in the private medical colleges in the state
• To generate more revenue, the medical colleges had been urging the state government to relax the NRI eligibility criteria for the past many years