At least 75 more aspirants for MBBS seats in the general category will get through, as seats that went unfilled in the category for candidates with disabilities this year were reallocated.
On Monday, the first day of counselling for medical admission, candidates under sports, ex-servicemen and physically handicapped category were called.
For the past two years, the government has been reserving 5% of the total number of seats for persons with disabilities. Yet, consistently the number of candidates who apply, and later appear for counselling in both engineering and medicine has been low. Last year, activists who have been fighting for the rights of the persons with disabilities, had said awareness about the seats available to them was low.
This year, of the 127 seats available for medical counselling only 74 applications were received and 29 were filled. One candidate’s allotment, under the Backward Class (Muslim) seat in Kilpauk Medical College, has been reserved for Person with Benchmark Disabilities due to second physical examination to be conducted by the regional medical board constituted at theRajiv Gandhi Government General Hospital, said G. Selvarajan, selection committee secretary.
This year, the officials had permitted persons with as much as 80% disability to participate in counselling following the result of a court battle.
On whether students with severe disability would be able to compete, especially in demanding courses like medicine and engineering, a former administrator said candidates with severe disability may find it difficult but that the demand for equality had come from human rights activists and that had to be honoured.
There were eight seats in sports (one for dental, seven for medical); and 11 for ex-servicemen (1 for dental, 10 for medical). All seats in these categories were allotted.
In the sports category, the first place went to Samitha S, a squash player, who was allotted Coimbatore Medical College. Sukanthan E, a tennis player who has represented India in Asian school games was placed third and Kaviyaa E, who was allotted Tirunelveli Medical College was placed second on the sports quota merit list.