Health Minister V.S. Sivakumar told the Assembly on Thursday that the government was confident of striking agreements with private self-financing medical colleges in the State on the subject of keeping apart the quota meant for merit admissions from the government’s rank list.
He said the seat allotment process now set rolling would provide admission to 1,100 candidates from the government’s rank list to the various government medical colleges, cooperative medical colleges including the one at Pariyaram and four Christian medical colleges.
The government had called the remaining 12 medical colleges, all in the private sector, for meetings three times and efforts were continuing to bring them round to agreeing on taking 50 per cent of the seats from the government’s rank list.
MES demandThe Minister said the authorities of the medical college run by the Muslim Educational Society reportedly had said they would, as a minority community institution, reserve its legal right to admit students from its own rank list.
“The other private medical colleges that have not yet entered into agreements with the government have not said they would not keep apart the quota for admission from the government’s rank list,” he said.
Time till September“In any case, we have time till September 30 to complete the seat allotment process for this year’s MBBS batch,” he said.
He was replying to a notice served by the CPI(M)’s T.V. Rajesh for moving an adjournment motion in the House to discuss the issue of MBBS admissions.
When Speaker G. Karthikeyan denied permission to move the adjournment motion following the Minister’s assurance, Leader of the Opposition V.S. Achuthanandan announced a walkout of the Opposition members accusing the government of “playing along with the private medical college managements against the interests of the students who have shown merit in the common entrance examinations”.
