NEET PG Counselling 2022: The MCC has decided to open the choice filling again and issue a fresh result for round 1. (Express Photo)The Medical Counselling Committee (MCC) withdrew the result for Round-1 of the NEET-PG counselling-2022 a day after declaring it, saying that there were problems in the information uploaded by some institutes. The Committee has now opened ‘choice filling’ afresh for the PG aspirants.
“… the provisional result for Round-1 of PG counselling…is being withdrawn since some of the PG DNB institutes did not complete their address profile on the portal due to which their seats were not visible when ‘state filter’ was applied by the candidates during choice filling, even though their seats were included in the seat matrix of Round-1 and were available for choice filling,” a notice by the MCC read.
The notice says that students who are satisfied by their choices need not make any changes as the software will pick the choices they had made. As per the revised schedule, after choice filling, the provisional results for the current round will be declared by month end.
There have been repeated delays in the counselling for PG courses over the last two years, with the first round of counselling this year starting mid-September as against the entire process — two rounds of counselling and mop-up rounds — usually getting completed by May end. After delays of several months since the results were declared on June 1, the counselling for 2021 was again postponed two days before it could start as the National Medical Commission (NMC) was in the process of issuing letters of approval for new seats.
Last year, the counselling was repeatedly delayed due to the pandemic and a bunch of cases in the courts regarding the newly introduced quota for economically weaker sections (EWS). The counselling for 2021 finally started in February this year. Resident doctors from across medical colleges in India had taken to streets last December, demanding that the PG counselling for 2021 be expedited as the delay resulted in shortage of around 30% junior resident doctors, the posts taken up by PG students in the associated hospitals as part of their training.
Many aspirants who applied for both 2021 and 2022 rounds had asked the government to push the date for this year’s exam because there wasn’t much gap for preparation after previous year’s counselling completed. The aspirants questioned why there was a delay in counselling even as the Health ministry wanted the courses back to their pre-pandemic timeline.
The Federation of Resident Doctors’ Association (FORDA), which led the December protests last year, in a tweet said, “Why can’t there be strict rules and regulations? Why can’t the adherence to rules be checked upon? Most unfortunate is that the Health ministry remains a silent spectator.”
Former president of the Indian Medical Association Dr Ravi Wankhedkar said, “Incompetent, inefficient anti-student NMC playing havoc with careers of young doctors. Unfortunately, Health ministry is a silent spectator.”