The counselling for admission into MBBS and BDS course for 2014, began on a peaceful note at Andhra University School of Distance Education (AUSDE) here on Saturday. AUSDE is one among the five centres across the two states of Andhra Pradesh and Telangana.
This year, Dr. NTR University of Health Sciences (NTRUHS), the nodal agency, has made two critical changes in the admission process. Firstly, NTRUHS has notified all the medical colleges across the two states to obtain an affidavit from the students, stating that if the State governments of both the states do not go ahead with the fee reimbursement scheme, then the students will have to pay the fees. And secondly, the health university has issued a circular that if any student drops from getting admitted after the third counselling, he or she will have pay Rs. 1 lakh as cancellation fee to the university and all the fees paid will be forfeited.
“ Till now there is no clarity on the fee reimbursement issue from both the State governments and that is why an affidavit is being collected. In the second case, it has been seen that a few students drop purposefully after the third counselling and the private colleges convert those seats into management seats and sell at exorbitant rates. The rule was framed to discourage this practice,” said Chairman Board of Studies and Camp Officer at the counselling centre M.S. Prasad Babu.
ADVERTISEMENT
In general, the fee for government colleges for MBBS is Rs. 10,000 and Rs. 60,000 for A category seats in private colleges. The fee for B category seats in private colleges is Rs. 2.4 lakh and the government fixed amount for C category (Management quota) seats in private colleges is about Rs. 5.5 lakh. But the seats are sold at mind-boggling rates, and sources say that it even touches Rs. 1 crore. In total there are 40 medical colleges in both the states, with 24 in AP alone. In the case of dental, the total is 26, with 14 in AP.
On the first day, the counselling was held for ranks from 1 to 1500, the counselling process was inaugurated by Vice-Chancellor of Andhra University Prof. G.S.N. Raju.