Delay in Telangana dental services counselling costs students seats

Hyderabad: About 3,000 students seeking admissions in Masters in dental sciences in medical colleges are likely to lose seats in Telangana as the state has yet not started its counselling process. Despite repeated calls and meetings with Kaloji Narayana Rao University of Health Sciences (KNRUHS), the merit lists and seat matrix have not been released.

Moreover, the all-India counselling for other states has already begun and if the state lists are not released soon, students have a chance of losing seats in other states as well.

“The officials blame the delay on the completion of the 10 years after the bifurcation of Telangana and Andhra Pradesh. We have been told that the university is waiting for a GO to be passed to scrap the 15 per cent quota through which Telangana offered its seats to Andhra Pradesh students. This is unreasonable as AP has already resolved this issue and has started the registration process for 100 per cent seats on July 20,” said a student who cleared the NEET MDS this year.

“As per the medical counseling committee’s (MCC) notification dated June 25, 2024, the state-level counselling for MDS admissions was scheduled to commence on July 10. Despite this, there has been no official notification from the university and this is causing significant anxiety among the MDS aspirants. The lack of clarity on the counselling dates is impacting students' ability to choose their education and future careers. The MCC guidelines stipulate that the state counselling phases should align with the all-India counseling schedule," said Dr MD Manzur Ahmed, national president of All India Dental Students Association (AIDSA).

The process that was supposed to begin on June 25 has yet not started. The all-India counselling began on July 20 and so did the AP counselling. The entire process of admissions take around 10 days. Though many students visited the university campus in Warangal, no officials were present to hear their grievances.

“After deferring for a month, the receptionist at the university told us that the merit lists will be released on August 2. That would be too late as some of us applying for all-India counselling have paid `2 lakh as security deposits. We would not be able to opt out of all-India counselling later without losing the deposit. This way, we are being forced to choose for institutes in other states,” said another student.

Students also alleged that the state has unnecessarily wasted two months to resolve these issues as the NEET MDS exam was conducted in March and the results were also announced within 10 to 15 days.