Maharashtra Medical admissions: 96% NRI quota still vacant allegedly due to high fee

"Most seats that go vacant are from NRI or institutional quota (15% of total seats) because private institutes charge a lot of money for these seats."-- Director of State Directorate of Medical Education and Research (DMER), Dr Pravin Shingare

Mumbai: Even though all rounds of admissions have already been completed, almost 96 per cent of medical seats under the quota of Non-Resident Indians (NRI) are still lying vacant allegedly due to high fee.

This incidence has occurred despite the rigorous battle between 13 lakh aspirants for a mere 66,000 seats in undergraduate medical and dental institutes this year.

According to a recent media account in Hindustan Times, 248 medical seats remain available in the state. Out of these 248, over 243 are vacant at the private medical institutes. As indicated by the figures revealed by the Maharashtra Common Entrance Test (MH-CET) Cell, around 217 seats out of 225 NRI medical seats are yet to be filled after three rounds of admissions.

Within the state, 3,000 seats in government-run medical institutes and 1,500 seats at private institutes were available for the taking including these 225 seats under NRI quota.

When asked about the availability of this significant number of seats, the Director of State Directorate of Medical Education and Research (DMER), Dr Pravin Shingare told HT, "Most seats that go vacant are from NRI or institutional quota (15% of total seats) because private institutes charge a lot of money for these seats."

In order to fill up the remaining seats, many medical colleges are opting for various tactics. HT reports that some of the students got lucky after one of the colleges diverted a few of its NRI seats to open category and reduced fees from five times to three times the regular fees, while many students are still struggling to get admissions.

Although most private medical institutes claimed that they have filled all the vacant seats in the past few days, most of the medical aspirants as well as, their parents are sceptical.

"Seats that had no takers for the past two months have suddenly found takers. There's no way for DMER to find out how the institutes filled the vacant seats," said a parent.

He added 198 seats under NRI quota went unclaimed last year. The colleges had less than a week to fill vacant seats after DMER surrendered them.

Recently, on August 27 the DMER surrendered all vacant seats to medical institutes, giving them time till August 31 to fill these seats up.

On this, Dr Rajendra Gupta, Dean at MIMERS Medical College, Talegaon in Pune, informed, "We converted NRI seats to management quota and invited applications on August 27 itself. Based on merit, we allotted all vacant seats by August 31. We didn't need to re-work fees to fill vacant seats."

List for vacant dental seats is yet to be released.

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