With little or no chance of getting a seat in the State’s medical colleges due to a large number of quota, MBBS doctors from the open category, who want to pursue further studies, are now turning to Diplomate of National Board (DNB), a postgraduate degree programme of the National Board of Examination, which has very limited reservation.
On Sunday, students and their parents gathered for a candlelight protest at Carter Road terming the developments as ‘murder of merit’. Similar protests were held across the country.
The DNB has 30 broad specialties and super specialty courses. With the newly introduced Socially and Economically Backward Classes quota and the Economically Weaker Sections quota, the number of seats for Doctor of Medicine (MD) and Master of Surgery (MS) have reduced drastically. The open category students said they have no other choice but to opt for DNB.
The applications deadline for DNB is April 15 while the first list is expected to be out on April 18. Both the all-India lists for MD and MS have been released, but the second State list is yet to be released, which leaves the open category students with slim chances to get through.
While a DNB is equivalent to the PG courses offered in the medical colleges, most students prefer government colleges to get more exposure due to the heavy work load there.
“We do not have a choice but to apply for DNB. My all-India rank for NEET-PG is 3,880 and State rank is 276. Last year, I would have easily bagged a seat in any of the top government medical colleges in Mumbai, but this year, I am not even getting a periphery college for obstetrics and gynaecology,” Angad Randive, an aspirant, who was also one of the petitioners to move the court against the reservation, said.
The Hindu has been reporting about the plight of open category aspirants for the past two weeks. They have staged a series of protests and marches in the city, asking the government not increase quota by compromising on the seats of the open category students. The State’s private colleges now have merely 37 of the 469 seats for open category while the government colleges have only 233 of the 972 seats for the open category.