Kerala: Doubts loom over spot medical admission move

KOCHI: With the state’s medical admissions coming under a cloud for a variety of reasons and the government forced to backtrack on two important orders, the move to conduct online counseling for private medical colleges is also being viewed with suspicion. Though the state government repeatedly asserts that it will conduct the spot admissions after online counseling, this will violate the Supreme Court order in this regard, because it may finally allow the managements to conduct the admission. Higher education circles point out that the government is playing into the hands of the managements. When the high court takes up the medical admission case on August 7, the issue of spot admission in all probability would come up.

The Supreme Court has asked the state government to forward a list of students in the order of merit equaling ten times the number of vacant seats to the medical college to fill any ‘stray’ vacancy in spot counseling.  So it will be difficult for the state government to successfully stake any claim for spot admissions if an argument comes up in this regard in the HC. With the second online allotment scheduled for August 8, it would also be difficult for the government to change it into manual counseling as ordered by the Supreme Court. So this is being viewed as a move to enable private medical managements to make their own admission in the spot admissions to a large number of seats that are sure to fall vacant after the online counseling process.

The strength of the manual counseling is that it would not allow students to give options and then not take admission. CEE Dr M T Reju told DC that there would be logistical problems for candidates to attend manual counseling and hence he was opting for online counselling.  When contacted, former Joint Commissioner of Entrance Examinations Dr S Rajookrishnan said that manual counseling was successfully conducted at three places in Kochi, Thiruvananthapuram and Kozhikode in 2005. “This wouldn’t be a problem for students and parents, especially as it ensures a berth for meritorious genuine aspirants and when it also concerns a major step in their life. Even for the All India Quota, manual counseling has been successfully conducted,” he said.