Maharashtra : Medical Seats of OCI/NRI stand cancelled in absence of NEET scores

Mumbai: Foreign students have been worst hit in the admissions race, primarily, because NEET has been made compulsory for all seeking admissions in medical colleges in India. Some have lost their seats due to lack of awareness; others due to false assurances on the part of private institutions assuring them at the out set and later withdrawing under the Supreme Court strictures making NEET ranking a compulsory admission criterion.

The Supreme Court order making NEET mandatory was not in many cases communicated to NRI students like Ritu Ojha a US national and Overseas Citizen of India (OCI), who came to Mumbai to study a course in Dental Science from Rangoonwala College of Dental Sciences and Research, and was told before embarking for Pune that her admission stood cancelled, due to NEET ranking criterion.She not being the only isolated case reports TOI. There are several other NRI and OCI students in the same boat, who have been forced to drop this year.

Director, DMER, Pravin Shingare, said a few students had approached him with this problem. "But we could not do anything. The SC order was out in May and students and institutes should have known it beforehand. These seats can be filled at the institute level as NRI students are included in the management quota," he added.