Special counselling held for 144 MBBS students

CHENNAI: The Tamil Nadu state selection committee held a special counselling at the office of the Directorate of Medical Education here to reallocate seats for 144 MBBS students who joined the Annaii Medical College Hospital, Kancheepuram, in the 2016-17 academic year.
In 2017, the students moved the Madras high court as the Medical Council of India (MCI) refused to give the college permission to continue the MBBS course as it didn’t have infrastructure. The court ordered that the students be transferred to a state-run college because most of these students joined courses through the state’s single window counselling. The Union health ministry and the Medical Council of India granted permission to transfer the students.

On Tuesday, while 87 students were reallocated seats based on their Class XII marks, the rest were allotted seats based on their NEET-2016 scores.

Of the 22 government medical colleges, officials removed Madras Medical College and Stanley Medical College from the seat matrix as each of them already had 250 students. “We added about eight students to colleges that had 100 seats and seven students to colleges that had 150 seats,” he said. These students will continue to pay around Rs 3 lakh as their tuition fee.

“After completing counselling for students on merit, we did counselling for those under the management quota,” said selection committee secretary Dr G Selvarajan.

Most students walked out of the counselling room heaving a sigh of relief. “We fought it hard to get a medical seat. We will have to attend special classes in our medical colleges to catch up with the lost time and ensure that we don’t lose attendance,” a student said.