New Delhi: Students thrown out of colleges protest outside Health Minister's House

New Delhi: The 150 Medical Council of India ousted students, out of the 519 from various medical colleges, demonstrated outside the Union Health Minister, JP Nadda’s residence, on Wednesday, demanding justice. The Supreme Court has ordered their expulsion for violating its orders on Counselling before admissions.

Exasperated students expressed their helplessness and said they did not know what to do in such a situation. One of the parents revealed that many were going without food and were in a depressed state of mind.

The Supreme Court in an order dated 28^th September directed that all counselling had to be conducted by the state government and admissions were to follow after counselling.

In the case of these 519, admissions had happened without counselling to 17 medical colleges of the country, out of which 14 were spread all over the state of Uttar Pradesh.

Justifying their admissions without counselling, the students said that the counselling procedure was so ‘slow’ that they were forced to jump the ladder on 6^th October,2016 and seek direct admissions on 7^th October,2016, the last day of admissions.

Shekhar Tripathy 26, studying in Hind Medical College, Lucknow, said his dreams were shattered. “We were attending classes for the last three months and all of a sudden MCI served us letters to cancel our admissions. All my relatives, family members and friends know that I am pursuing MBBS and I will become a doctor. Now what will I tell them? I have no options left,” he stated tearfully to Hinddu.

Tripathy said his dream of becoming a doctor are well and truly over, with his admission cancellation for the 2016 session. The health ministry’s directive to fix an upper age limit of 25 for NEET from 2017, does not allow him to write the exam again.

“What do I do?” he asked.

As of now, no one has any answers for him.

Another student stated, “It’s the state government’s fault if it could not conduct counselling efficiently. MCI should have taken a considerate view. We have scored more marks than those students who were admitted through counselling.”

Students said they will continue their protests.

“It was our bad luck that the minister (Nadda) was in Kullu (Himachla Pradesh) when we protested outside his house. But we will meet MPs and continue to protest till we get justice. We have already written a letter to the PM,” .

What come as an enormous setback for the students is the Supreme-Court appointed Oversight Committee approving MCI’s decision to cancel 519 admissions.

“I don’t think there is any scope for these students now. The only option they have is to file a case in the Supreme Court,” a senior health ministry official,told HT.

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