Shortage of candidates, qualifying cutoff score lowered by 40% to fill MDS seats in Punjab colleges

Faridkot, October 15

Facing shortage of eligible candidates to fill about 85 Master of Dental Surgery (MDS) seats in 11 dental colleges in the state, the Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare has lowered the minimum qualifying marks and percentile for admission to these seats.

The Ministry lowered the qualifying marks for the course admission by 35 to 40 per cent today.

As 84 of about 140 MDS state quota seats remained vacant in the first round of counselling conducted by Baba Farid University of Health Sciences (BFUHS) this week, the qualifying percentile for the MDS has been lowered from 50 to 24.286 for the candidates of general category, while for the SC/BC and handicapped candidates, the qualifying percentile has been reduced from 40 to 14.286 and 45 to 19.286, respectively.

If the cut-off score as qualifying criteria for the general category was 263 marks in the information bulletin of BFUHS, the cut-off score now is 174 marks.

For the SC/ST and handicapped candidates, BFUHS has revised the qualifying cut-off score to 138 marks against 227 and 157 marks against 245 marks, respectively, in a notice this week.

With this reduction in the qualifying cut-off score, BFUHS today invited additional number of candidates for admission to the dentistry course for second counseling.

“Fresh registration applications for the MDS course have been invited for the second round of counselling after the Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare and the National Board of Examination have revised the qualifying percentile for admission,” the authorities at BFUHS said.

Dental colleges in the state are not facing a shortage of aspirant candidates only in the MDS course. More worrisome is the status of non-clinical MD seats in seven medical colleges in the state.

Over 100 non-clinical seats in the medical colleges remained vacant in the first round of counselling.

84 seats vacant in 1st round of counselling

• Baba Farid University of Health Sciences held the first round of counselling this week
• As many as 84 of the nearly 140 MDS state quota seats remained vacant in the first round of counselling
• The qualifying percentile for the MDS course has been lowered from 50 to 24.286 for candidates of the general category
• For SC/BC and handicapped candidates, it has been reduced from 40 to 14.286 and 45 to 19.286, respectively