West Bengal : New domicile decision for counselling has aspirants divided

Kolkata: Bengal holding's aspiring medical aspirants who managed to score NEET ranks have been left disheartened with the state’s latest decision to tweak pre- and post-counseling norms. These student have shown displeasure over the state’s decision opens admissions in the state’s colleges to merit rank aspirants from outside the region.

This comes with the tweak in the policy that allows an aspirant to appear for counselling even if they are not residing in the state, but have any one part who has a permanent address in Bengal. The entire fight is for the 85% state quota in counselling

NEET qualifiers of this year have to fill either of the two proforma forms — domicile A or B for Counselling .

• Domicile A will include candidates who have been in Bengal for the last 10 years,


• Domicile B would constitute of those who have lived outside the state for the last 10 years but have one parent with a permanent address in Bengal.

“If a student has Aadhaar card with the address of a different state, he would have been considered the domicile of that state during admissions. But now, if the student’s parent is a permanent resident of Bengal then he will be able to fill up forms in both Bengal and the other state. This will reduce chances of students from Bengal finding seats here,” said Amiya Maity, former SSKM teacher to the TOI.

However, responding to the agitation Director, Medical Education, Debashis Bhattacharya, pointed out the same policy is being implemented for admissions to engineering courses. "Why are questions being raised on the medical counselling process?” queried. Counselling begins June 19th Onwards.