Medical admissions chaos in Maharashtra: Private colleges allot 208 of 400 PG seats
Last week, five institutes took part in the Common Admissions Process
More than a week after private medical colleges in Maharashtra refused to participate in the Common Admissions Process (CAP) for postgraduate seats, it has now come to the fore that more than 50% seats in these institutes have been allotted to students.
As per information shared by Directorate of Medical Education and Research (DMER), private colleges confirmed admissions to 208 seats out of 400.
“For now, 192 seats remain vacant in private medical institutes and these figures can change if more institutes choose to admit students in the coming days. If not, then we will publish a second list for admissions — minus these 192 seats,” said Dr Pravin Shingare, director, DMER.
HT had earlier highlighted that 11 private institutes refused to admit students even after Maharashtra-Common Entrance Test (MH-CET) cell allotted students to each of the 400 seats in the first CAP round.
The five institutes to participate in the admissions process were Kashibai Navale College in Pune, Bombay Hospital and Medical Research Centre in Mumbai, Sancheti Institute for Orthopedics and Rehabilitation in Pune, Sanjeevan Medical Foundation ENT Post-Graduate Training Institute in Miraj and Swastiyog Pratishthan in Miraj.
“Controlling fees will affect the quality of education and we don’t want that. Therefore, we requested to be exempted from admissions for time being because it makes no sense to go by the current fee structure,” said Kamal Kishore Kadam, president, Association of Management of Unaided Private Medical and Dental Colleges.
More than a month ago, FRA had sent out a notice to all private medical and dental institutes in the state, asking them to stick to common fees for all their seats, including those under the management and NRI quotas. The institutes had threatened to boycott admissions season if they were not allowed to charge three times and five times the regular fees for management and NRI quotas. After a series of meetings, the FRA had decided to allow private institutes to charge continue charging three and five times the regular fees for both the quotas for the year 2018-19.
However, two weeks ago these institutes sought permission for all their quota seats, which constitutes 50% of the total seats (50% is merit seats), to be charged at five times the regular fees.
