Reservation Woes: MBBS Aspirants in Punjab Struggle as counselling getting delayed

Chandigarh: Students who are vying for admission to MBBS and BDS courses in Punjab based medical and dental colleges are stuck in a dilemma since uncertainty is prevailing over the counselling process in the state.

While other states have already started their academic session for this year, the first counselling session hasn’t even commenced in Punjab.

According to recent media reports, this confusion over the MBBS and BDS admissions is apparently due to legal tangles raged over the reservation of seats, including one relating to micro reservation quota.

The eight medical colleges in the state offer 1,225 MBBS seats — 600 in three government medical colleges and 625 in five self-financing institutions. There are 1,230 BDS seats in 15 dental colleges.

After NEET 2019 results were declared, the Medical Education Department on June 6 had released an official notification based on which, the Baba Farid University of Health Sciences (BFUHS) had asked the MBBS and BDS aspirants to give their preference by June 25.

The date was extended to July 5. The result of the first round of counselling was to be declared on July 8 and candidates were to join the allotted colleges by July 12.

Again on July 4, the fresh schedule of the Round 1 counselling was released, inviting candidates to give preference by July 8 and selected candidates were to join allotted institutes by July 15. There was another extension on July 9 and July 11, informing the concerned aspirants about the counselling on hold till further orders.

Further, on July 15, a public notice was issued which announced that the counselling process is kept in abeyance till July 19 on the directions of the state Medical Education Department.

On July 26, the Punjab and Haryana high court held that mi­cro reser­va­tion of 1% in MBBS and BDS cour­ses for chil­dren/grand­chil­dren of ter­ror-af­fected per­sons/anti-Sikh ri­ots-af­fected per­sons would be ap­pli­ca­ble to the state quota as well as the man­age­ment quota in all pri­vate un­aided non-mi­nor­ity med­i­cal/den­tal in­sti­tu­tions.

The court also held that un­der sports quota in govern­ment col­leges, the reser­va­tion would be 3% and not 1% as no­ti­fied by the govern­ment.

Accordingly, directions were given to the Medical Education Department to issue a fresh notification on the same; however, with so many days down the line, the department is yet to issue the notification.

On the other hand, on August 9, the Punjab government filed a special leave petition in Supreme Court challenging the HC order, reports The Indian Express.

The students, meanwhile, have been left in a lurch.

“The department is taking legal advice over the high court ruling on micro reservation quota in private institutions. The legal matters take time. The judgment was pronounced on July 26, but it took some time to receive the complete written order of the court. We are going through the details and the matter will be resolved as soon as possible,” said DK Tiwari, Principal Secretary, Department of Medical Education and Research (DMER) informed HT.

“The university will start counselling after the department will issue a notification in this regard. There has been delay in the counselling process, but it will not affect the study of students as academic session starts from August 31,” said Raj Bahadur, Vice-Chancellor, BFUHS.