Kerala flouts apex court's order on medical counselling

KOCHI: In a move that is set to come as a setback to genuine students and could invite contempt of court proceedings from the Supreme Court, the Com-missioner of Entrance Examinations (CEE) is moving to conduct online counselling for MBBS /BDS admissions including in private colleges from August 8. A two-member bench of the apex court in its verdict in the Dar-Us-Salam Educational Trust vs. MCI case had on May 9 said that manual counselling should be conducted to fill MBBS seats.

“In order to ascertain the number of seats that still remain vacant after the counselling the state government or the authority designated by the state government shall conduct manual counselling for allotment of students. After the completion (of) counseling, the state government shall determine the number of seats that are still vacant and thereafter shall forward a list of students in order of merit, equaling to 10 times the number of vacant seats to the medical college so that in case of any stray vacancy arising in any college the said seat may be filled up from the said list,” the SC order said.

“The order assumes significance with only 33.8 per cent seats in the All India Quota (AIQ) in government medical colleges getting filled after the first allotment. This shows that a lot of students who are not interested in taking admission give options online denying others with lower ranks the chance to get admission. After the second allotment, AIQ seats are transferred to state quota. If the counselling is done manually, the students will be forced to deposit fees then and there and take admission. Hence it is important in the case of state medical admissions also. The SC had allowed online counselling for AIQ, but not for states.

In the case of private medical college admissions, this will also rule out foul play by the managements to admit students they prefer. The SC verdict has also pointed to this,” said Dr S. Rajookrishnan, former joint CEE. He noted that the SC had stated in the quoted para above that it had envisaged only stray vacancies after the second round allotments which could be filled by the managements. “It is not a largesse to the managements, and they cannot expect many vacancies if the counselling is done manually,” he said.