Tamil Nadu: Deemed universities face a 90 percent vacancies after 1st round of counselling

Chennai: The first round of counselling conducted by Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS) for deemed universities having ended, reveals 90% of MBBS/BDS seats lying vacant. July 22 was the last date to report at the deemed universities to both report and give up allotted seats. The second round of the DGHS counselling has taken off; August 8 is the designated day for allotment announcement.

The first round of allotments reached the All India rank mark of 6,47,124, for seats available . It is the first time that DGHS is holding MBBS/BDS admissions for deemed universities based on NEET 2017 ranking.

The vacancy announcements made by the DGHS on its webpage revealed that most students had either not joined or given up on their allotments.

Of the seat available at the 8 deemed universities in Tamil Nadu offering 1,185 seats under the management quota, 1,073 seats remain vacant. Of the 143 NRI quota seats, 85 have not been filled up.

Chennai’s ACS Medical College does not have a single entrant this year. Vinayaka Mission, Salem and Meenakshi Medical College Hospital, Chennai have just three admissions each.

Other states have shown an equally poor student response in some of the top universities.

Following is their status of admissions:

• DY Patil Medical College Hospital- 4 Management quota seats; 10 NRI quota seats


• Manipal-based Kasturba Medical College- 160 of 212 MBBS seats, and 30 of 38 NRI seats lie vacant


• Visakhapatmam-based GITAM Institute of Medical Sciences-124 of 127 management seats and all NRI seats remain vacant

When asked why they had not turned up at the colleges for admissions, the students revealed that they were waiting for the second round of counselling in government quota and at least first round of counselling in their states.

"DGHS should have started admission process for deemed universities after completing process for 15% All India Quota. It would have given time for students to see if they had a chance for better options in government colleges within their state," Saveetha Medical College, Dean, T Gunasagaran told TOI.

Ravi Kumar, parent of a student allotted a seat in Chennai-based SRM University,told the TOI, that he decided to give up on the seat given to his child because of the high fee.

"The tuition fee is Rs 23 lakh a year. I may have to shell out an additional Rs 3 lakh towards other expenses, including hostel fee, laboratory fee and university fee. I decided to wait for state counselling. I am hoping he will get into a state-run college where the entire course fee is less than Rs 80,000," he said.

The 2^nd phase of Deemed Counselling will take place simultaneously with the 2^nd round of the government colleges one.The vacant seat transfer will happen to the respective universities on August 27, after the mop up counselling session to be held on 21^st August. The universities will have three days to fill remaining seats, after the second session, as the MCI deadline comes to an end on August 31.

In 2015, deemed universities were allowed to admit students on the basis of their class 12 marks or an entrance exam. 2016 saw the Supreme Court order admissions based on NEET ranking. This year the apex body has given a directive to the Council to conduct Centralized Counselling for deemed admissions.

Unlike expectations, the DGHS officials are a bit taken aback at the admission fall out.

"Although we expected there may be some resignations, we did not expect such a high percentage. We are hoping to complete admission before mop-up," a senior official preferring anonymity said. No revised dates for counselling have been announced by the DGHS.