Mumbai: Admission for medical and dental seats in deemed or private universities started in Thursday, after the Supreme Court cleared the way. The SC clearly stated that deemed universities would have to admit only those students whom it had already taken in before September 16. The rest of their vacant seats will be filled by the State, and their admission process has been extended till October 7. This clearly means that deemed institutions are not bound to restrict admissions to students domiciled in Maharashtra.
Though deemed universities tend to offer high-quality education, they also have comparatively high fees. But because of the chaotic admission process to medical schools this year, desperate parents are even ready to opt for deemed universities for their children.
Students have been given time till noon of September 30 to cancel their private seats without penalty to seek admission in deemed universities. Those who cancel private medical seats after 12 noon, will have to pay up entire course tuition fees as penalty. To facilitate students, commissioner of common entrance test cell, Chandrasekhar Oak has directed institutions to return original documents and fees of students within 2 pm of September 30.
However, now parents feel helpless as the private medical college seats seem alluding to them in spite of the clear court order. “I saw parents roaming with wads of notes in medical campus’ discussing seats with agents, who clearly tell them that you don’t need marks to get seats here,” complained parent Ruiee Kapoor.
“With deemed universities admissions opening up, there were many cancellations in private colleges, but the medical colleges are refusing to show the actual number of seats vacant. Also, many parents who got betterment seats are cancelling admissions to move on. A parent saw a medical college register showing 30 medical seat cancellations, but the website continued to display just one seat as vacant. Obviously, they are hiding their seats. Private colleges want to refuse giving seats on merit to mint money and no one seems to care about the students of Maharashtra. Instead, we see agents’ openly selling seats right within campuses,” says parent Sudha Shenoy. She along with many other parents of medical aspirants had successfully fought a tough battle in courts to ensure 85 % of seats for students who were domicile of Maharashtra.
Wednesday saw students in a tizzy desperately trying their luck to apply in individual private medical colleges. The concept of transparent merit based admission process seems to have got tossed out of the window after many students complained that they were not able to even apply to seek for admissions online. After bringing out two merit lists, the state government chose not to bring third merit list and instead decided to hand back vacant seats back to the individual medical colleges.
“When we tried to apply online to these institutions, their mails would bounce back or were being blocked. Despite the instructions to provide alternate mail Ids, only one college bothered to provide another mail address to apply. The non-co-operative attitude of the private medical colleges has dejected and stressed us,” says Mahendra Choudhari, a parent.
Institutions cited technical server problems due to heavy overflow of inward mails and even blocking of the account by service providers, to accept admission forms online, but many refuse to believe them.
“Private medical colleges have already sold their seats by taking in money. And now colleges are literally hiding seats from us. Some colleges refused to even provide acknowledgment slip of the admission forms submitted,” complained student Harshwardhan Mohite. He along with his parents have literally hit the road from Nashik to Ahmednagar and Pune and even got their relatives to fill in admission forms offline in individual medical colleges. “We are spending a lot of money on travelling, food, hotel stays to complete the formalities,” he said. “I will keep an eye on merit list of one medical college as it may come by 11 pm, midnight or even 3 am,” he said.
Separate merit list
Meanwhile, a separate merit list of candidates under the Maharashtra Karnataka Border reserved category was also released. Students from this category were to join on September 29. A personal counseling was also organized for them on Thursday at the Directorate of Medical Education office to fill up the vacant seats immediately by students who have the necessary original documents.
Meanwhile, admissions for other medical courses like Bachelor of Homeopathy, Ayurvedic, Unani, Physiotherapy, Bachelor of Audiology and Speech Language Therapy, Bachelor of Prosthetics and Orthotics’ and even Bachelor of Science (Nursing) may be held in the first week of October, the commissioner of the state Common Entrance Test cell Chandrashekhar Oak stated. In a note uploaded on their website, Oak stated that the admissions were being held in October since “most of the colleges of Health Science courses (except medical/ dental) have not received either approval from respective Central Council or affiliation from Maharashtra University of Health Sciences.”
