SC relief for medical aspirants

MUMBAI: Thousands of medical and dental aspirants heaved a sigh of relief on Wednesday after the Supreme Court gave its verdict regularising all admissions already done at deemed institutes and allowing the state to allot the vacant seats.

HT Image

This means students from across the country can now avail a seat in the deemed institutes of the state. The court also extended the last date of admission to October 7.

“We sought centralised admissions to all institutes in the state for the betterment of students, so that they don’t have to rush from one institute to another. Now, we have asked deemed institutes to surrender the remaining seats so that we can allot them to students,” said Dr Pravin Shingare, director, Directorate of Medical Education and Research (DMER).

He said that a detailed schedule for the admissions will be released on Thursday. “Since we had started inviting applications for deemed institutes in August before the Bombay high court ordered a stay on the issue, we have already received more than 15,000 applications from aspirants all over India,” he said.

These applications are for the approximately 1,900 medical and dental seats in Maharashtra-based deemed institutes. Until Wednesday night, DMER was unaware of how many seats were vacant in deemed institutes.

While this verdict comes as a relief to several students who were stuck in limbo due to a stay on deemed institutes admissions, students and parents think it has come a little late in the day.

“Since deemed institutes started their admissions in August, there will be very few vacant seats left. To make matters worse, students from across the country will apply, which has lowered our chances. This is not great news for us,” said Anuja Sharma, an aspirant.

Parents have also highlighted the problem that most deemed institutes had decided to start regular lectures by October 1, so they are hasting up the process of allotting seats. “On Wednesday, many students received an SMS from deemed institutes to come for counselling, which means they will leave no seats for DMER to allot. The court’s decision will not change much for our children,” said Rajesh Jain, state member of Parents Association for Medical Students.