Legal tangle delays counselling for MBBS, BDS admissions

The confusion over the counselling for MBBS and BDS admissions being conducted by Baba Farid University of Health Sciences (BFUHS) prevails among medical aspirants in Punjab.

Facing legal tangle due to court cases, including one relating to micro reservation quota, the department of medical education and research is yet to announce the new date for starting counselling for the first round of MBBS and BDS admissions.

Even 13 days after the Punjab and Haryana high court directed the department to issue a fresh notification providing 1% micro reservation quota in MBBS and BDS cour­ses in all private medical and dental colleges in the state, it is yet to issue the notification.

“The department is taking legal advice over the high court ruling on micro reservation quota in private institutions. The legal matters take time. The judgment was pronounced on July 26, but it took some time to receive the complete written order of the court. We are going through the details and the matter will be resolved as soon as possible,” said DK Tiwari, principal secretary, department of medical education and research.

“The university will start counselling after the department will issue a notification in this regard. There has been delay in the counselling process, but it will not affect the study of students as academic session starts from August 31,” said Raj Bahadur, vice-chancellor, BFUHS.

On July 26, the high court held that mi­cro reser­va­tion of 1% in MBBS and BDS cour­ses for chil­dren/grand­chil­dren of ter­ror-af­fected per­sons/anti-sikh ri­ots-af­fected per­sons would be ap­pli­ca­ble to the state quota as well as the man­age­ment quota in all pri­vate un­aided non-mi­nor­ity med­i­cal/den­tal in­sti­tu­tions.

The court also held that un­der sports quota in govern­ment col­leges, the reser­va­tion would be 3% and not 1% as no­ti­fied by the govern­ment.

With the delay in the notification regarding counselling, confusion prevails among medical aspirants. The MBBS and BDS classes for the 2019 academic session have already started in many of the neighbouring states.

The counselling process has already been on hold for more than a month.

Following a notification issued by the department of medical education and research on June 6, the BFUHS had asked aspirants to give their preference by June 25. However, the date was extended to July 5. The result of the first round of counselling was to be declared on July 8, but on July 4, the fresh schedule of the first round of counselling was released. There was a couple of other extensions on July 9 and July 11, informing the aspirants about the keeping the counselling on hold till further orders.

On July 15, another notice was issued by BFUHS announcing to keep the counselling process in abeyance till July 19 on the directions of the department of medical education and research. However, no fresh notice has been issued by BFUHS so far.

The eight medical colleges in the state offer 1,225 MBBS seats — 600 in three government colleges and 625 in five private institutions. There are 1,230 BDS seats in 15 dental colleges.

First Published: Aug 08, 2019 22:57 IST