Telangana HC probes KNRUHS local category shift

HYDERABAD: In a shocking development, the Kaloji Narayana Rao University of Health Sciences authorities have changed the status of several students who were shown as non-local in the convener quota to the local category under the management quota.

All these students had approached the Telangana High Court against the controversial decision of the university to change the definition of local category from this academic year. The High Court recorded the discrepancy during a hearing on Tuesday.

Parents who approached the court alleged that the university had been playing a mind game with the students who otherwise would never get an opportunity to pursue medicine because of change in the definition of local category, by luring them into the management quota. They saw in the university’s new rule a clear sell-out to private medical colleges, whose managements may find it difficult to fill the B category seats this year.

“The university showed our children as non-locals in the list of applied candidates under the convener quota because they did not meet the new guidelines. But, based on the same set of documents uploaded by the same students, they were treated as Osmania University local area students in the list of applied candidates for the management quota,” explained one parent.

While applying for the convener quota, students were asked to fill the details of the institutions in which they had studied Classes 9, 10, 11 and 12. The software was designed in such a way that based on the details they filled the students’ status in terms of local or non-local was considered and accordingly they were placed in the respective category in the applied list for the convener quota.

“When we applied for management quota, the programming was changed in such a way that the system merely asked the student to upload certificates and there was no provision at all to fill the details of institutions where the students studied Classes 9, 10, 11 and 12,” said another parent, adding that the university should explain why the programming was changed for management quota.

The private colleges fear that the demand for seats in the management quota would drastically fall this year because all seats in the convener quota are reserved for local students, by denying entry to students from Andhra and Rayalaseema post the end of 10 years of the AP Reorganisation Act.

Because of increase in seats and bar on students from AP and Rayalaseema, local students with rank up to two lakh also stand to get a seat in the convener quota either in government or private colleges for which fee is very nominal. Because of this, demand for seats in management quota, for which fee is as high as `13 lakh, will come down.