Maharashtra government colleges have more medical, dental seats to offer

Mumbai: Maharashtra medical and dental colleges have more seats to offer aspirants this year with an increase of a 100 more seats in the state. The increase comes in the face of newer institute coming up, and an increase in seat numbers in the ongoing institutes.

“These approvals came over the past few months, so government institutes have 90 more seats compared to last year’s 2,810. The deemed institutes (accredited by the University Grants Commission) also have more seats to offer,” Dr Pravin Shingare, Director, Directorate of Medical Education & Research (DMER) revealed. He also informed that deemed university seat number had increased by 275 with the seats increasing from last year’s 1,675 to 1,800 this year.

While the seat increase leads to more admissions at one end many private colleges are refraining from taking in fresh numbers as they await accreditation.

Though demand for seats is the highest in government institutes, due to cheaper fee, the ones who fall out on government institutions have to turn to private colleges.

Meanwhile, deemed medical and dental courses are beyond the reach of a majority of the students due to the expenses involved in terms of fee.

“A couple of private institutes have dropped out of the admission system this year. So the number of seats available in private institutes have come down,” state medical education department official.

The DMER will soon be releasing an admission schedule for state and private medical & dental colleges with the Supreme Court having lifted the stay on the National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test (NEET) results.

“Admissions can only be conducted on merit, so once the CBSE releases the results, our schedule will be ready,” Shingare told the HT.

NEET results are to be announced before June 26, 2017, as per the Supreme Court directive to the Central Board of Secondary Education(CBSE)

Medical and dental course admissions to all government or corporation institutes will be conducted by DMER, while the Central government is supposed to take care of deemed institutions academic session.