Nellore: Some private medical universities in Tamil Nadu have a requirement that aspirants should complete their internships on or before March 31, 2017, to be eligible for admission to MD/MS/Postgraduate Diploma Courses; and this has been causing heartburn for students from AP who are keen on applying to institutes in the neighbouring state.
Because of the delay in the release of final MBBS results last year, all medical students from AP began their internships late, on April 12, 2016. Their internships will end only on April 11, 2017.
In October last year, Neet released a public notice announcing that the internship cut-off date would be April 15, 2017 for medical students registering online for the Neet-PG 2017, for admission to medical colleges affiliated to the NTR University of Health Sciences.
Although medical colleges in AP are accepting applications on the basis of Neet’s requirements, their counterparts in Tamil Nadu are rejecting them, citing that the cut-off date of March 31, 2017 has been mentioned in their prospectuses.
Ms Geetha Lakshmi, Vice-Chancellor of Tamil Nadu MGR Medical University, said that all medical colleges and universities ensure that final year exams and the internships are completed by the end of March, in order to ascertain that their students are eligible for admission to PG Courses.
Mr V.V.S.N. Murthy, a parent of one of the victims of the cut-off date condition, said that his daughter had qualified for Neet 2017, but her application had been rejected by Ramachandra University in Chennai.
A retired IRS officer, Mr Murthy questioned the rationale behind this condition. He said that it was a blow to many parents like him, who were keen on admitting their children to TN-based universities.
He made an appeal that the authorities concerned in MCI Delhi and the AP Health Minister Dr Kamineni Srinivas prevail upon the Centre to issue directions to all medical universities and colleges to relax the internship completion date to April 15, for students from AP.
