Despite a special fifth round of counselling conducted by the Baba Farid University of Health Sciences (BFUHS) to fill 80 vacant seats of doctor of medicine (MD) courses in non-clinical branches, no eligible candidate appeared for admission on Friday.
Meanwhile, only 15 BDS seats were allotted during the additional fifth round of undergraduate counselling following which 601 undergraduate dental courses seats have remained vacant in private dental colleges across the state. However, only one eligible candidate appeared for admission to vacant MDS seats.
As a significant number of postgraduate (PG) medical courses and undergraduate (UG) dental courses’ seats remained vacant in Punjab medical and dental colleges after the conclusion of counselling, the BFUHS decided to hold an additional fifth round of counselling to fill these seats.
After four rounds of counselling by the medical varsity, 616 seats of bachelor of dental sciences (BDS), 80 seats of doctor of medicine (MD) and master of surgery (MS) courses and 10 seats of master of dental surgery (MDS) remained vacant in the state medical and dental colleges. Much to dismay, only a few BDS and MDS seats have been filled, while no one has shown up for MD courses seats.
Despite the cut-off being lowered by 25 percentile for each category for admissions to postgraduate courses, of the total 544 state quota seats of PG and PG diploma courses in three government and four private medical colleges, 82 seats are vacant after five rounds of counselling. As many as 80 (63%) of the total 126 non-clinical branches MD seats and two PG diploma seats were declared vacant.
{{/usCountry}}Despite the cut-off being lowered by 25 percentile for each category for admissions to postgraduate courses, of the total 544 state quota seats of PG and PG diploma courses in three government and four private medical colleges, 82 seats are vacant after five rounds of counselling. As many as 80 (63%) of the total 126 non-clinical branches MD seats and two PG diploma seats were declared vacant.
{{/usCountry}}The non-clinical subjects include anatomy, physiology, biochemistry, pharmacology, microbiology and community medicine. “Two years ago, after the outbreak of Covid, there was a demand for the microbiology branch. But this demand has once again declined,” said a BFUHS official.
Experts in the medical education field said the response and demand for non-clinical courses, including anatomy, physiology, biochemistry, pharmacology, microbiology and community medicine, was coming down and this year it had slipped further.
With 601 of the 1,330 BDS seats at Punjab’s 16 dental colleges left vacant, the figures are so far the highest in the past decade. For the 10th year in a row, private dental colleges in the state have failed to fill the BDS seats with almost every second seat vacant. Of 1,240 seats in 14 private colleges, 601 are vacant (49%). However, all 90 seats in the government dental colleges in Amritsar and Patiala were filled. Of the total colleges, 11 private colleges, having 100 seats each, have failed to fill even 50% BDS seats.