Chennai: The much anticipated Tamil Nadu Neet 2019 provisional rank list was released on Saturday on the official website of the health and family welfare department, Government of Tamil Nadu, by health minister C. Vijayabasker. Tamil Nadu MBBS/BDS counselling will commence from July 8.
On the first day, counselling for special categories including ex-servicemen and specially-abled will be held. Counselling for all other categories will begin from July 9.
The provisional rank lists for government quota and management quota were released separately. A total of 31,353 students have been placed in the Government quota merit list and 25,651 in the management quota merit list.
Tamil Nadu has a total of 5,400 MBBS seats and 1,940 BDS seats from 23 MBBS, one BDS government medical college and 13 MBBS and 18 BDS private medical colleges in the state, including Rajah Muthiah medical college, ESIC KK Nagar medical college and IRT Perundurai medical college. Of this, 580 MBBS seats and 27 BDS seats have been allotted for the All India category.
There were 39,013 applicants for MBBS counselling this year, of which 31,353 applicants - 1,1741 boys and 19,612 girls were declared qualified. 17,618 of the applicants were previous years' students. The state selection committee received a total of 25,984 applications for BDS counselling of which 322 were rejected and 14,387 applicants were old students.
Addressing the media, health minister C. Vijayabaskar said, "MBBS counselling will commence from July 8. Five per cent of seats have been reserved for the differently-abled this year." He also noted that there would be seven MBBS seats and one BDS seat on sports quota, and 10 MBBS seats and one BDS seat for children of ex-servicemen this year.
While the state government is already following 69 per cent reservation in MBBS admissions, talks are on for the implementation of 10 per cent quota for the economically-weaker sections. Speaking about this, health minister C. Vijayabasker said, "An all-party meet was convened on Monday evening to address this issue."
The state has received an additional 350 medical seats this year. In Tamil Nadu, 1,23,078 students appeared for NEET this year, of which 59,785 quali-
fied.
Tamil Nadu also recorded a huge improvement in the overall Neet results this year with 48.57 percent of the state's students clearing it, compared to the 39.56 percent last academic year.
