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Despite 62% BDS seats vacant in private dental colleges in Punjab, Gian Sagar gets nod for 100 more
Gian Sagar Institute has got the nod to start admissions for 100 BDS seats after which Punjab will have 1,330 BDS seats in 14 private and two government dental colleges.
Gian Sagar Institute has got the nod to start admissions for 100 BDS seats after which the state will have 1,330 BDS seats in 14 private and two government dental colleges.
The moves comes even as private dental colleges in the state are facing difficulty to fill their sanctioned BDS seats for the ninth year in a row.
With almost every second BDS seat vacant; of 1,150 seats in 13 private colleges, 643 are vacant (62%), while only seven seats are vacant in government dental colleges after two rounds of counselling by the Baba Farid University of Health Sciences (BFUHS), Faridkot. With Gian Sagar’s seats now, there are 743 vacant seats in 14 private dental colleges.
On Thursday, the department of medical education and research gave a nod to the institute run by the Gian Sagar Educational and Charitable Trust, Patiala,
for the intake of 100 BDS seats for the academic year 2021-22. After this, the BFUHS has included the institution in the mop-up round of counselling for admissions to BDS courses.
Earlier, Gian Sagar institute was allowed to start admissions for 150 MBBS seats after the new management paid an endowment fund of ₹1.40 crore to the state government. In April 2017, both medical and dental colleges run by Gian Sagar Institute had closed down after a controversy of financial mismanagement. The erstwhile Medical Council of India (MCI) and Dental Council of India (DCI) had withdrawn recognition to the dental and medical colleges of Gian Sagar Institute after the management failed to come up with a complete revival plan. The government had then shifted around 1,500 medical students to other institutes in the state.
Dr Raj Bahadur, vice-chancellor, BFUHS, said after the medical education department’s nod, Gian Sagar Institute was included in the mop-up round of counselling. “The admission for vacant MBBS and BDS seats would take place during the mop-up round of counselling scheduled between March 17 and April 5,” he added.
The previous years’ trends show that despite relaxation in admission criteria, private dental colleges failed to fill all BDS seats. In 2017, 275 seats remained vacant of 1,230. In 2018, 201 BDS seats remained vacant. Even after lowering the qualifying cut-off percentile by 10 percentile for each category, the number of vacant BDS seats jumped to 355 in 2019-20 academic session. In 2020-21, around 503 seats remained vacant.
In 2014, of 1,190 BDS seats, 104 remained vacant in dental, with the number increasing to 423 in 2015. Later, dental colleges recorded 540 and 516 vacant BDS seats in 2015 and 2016, respectively.
Nearly 600 dentists who graduate from state dental colleges annually have no industry to hire them. Most of them end up joining their seniors or faculty members in practice, earning as little as ₹5,000 a month. Experts also blame students’ craze for going abroad.
“Due to the lack of placements, a large number of medical students do not opt for dental courses. There is almost no job opportunity in the government sector, while pay in private sector is low,” says former BFUHS V-C Dr SS Gill.
