NEET counselling: SC extends deadline for Punjab, Haryana

SEPTEMBER 7 NEW DATE Curfew and violence after conviction of Sirsabased Dera Sacha Sauda head Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh led to seats remaining vacant, states tell high court

FARIDKOT: After both states missed the August 31 deadline to conclude the counselling for admission to MBBS and BDS as per the National Eligibility and Entrance Test (NEET) 2017, the Supreme Court on Saturday announced an extension for Punjab and Haryana till September 7.

The deadline was missed as, owing to curfew and violence in the states after conviction of Sirsa (Haryana)-based Dera Sacha Sauda Gurmeet Singh Ram Rahim in a rape case on August 25, Baba Farid University of Health Sciences (BFUHS), Faridkot, had postponed the

counselling for Punjab. KK Venugopal, attorney general for the state in the SC, submitted, “Due to law and order problem and other disturbances, counselling could not be held.

Students of Punjab and Haryana are affected by the said situ-

ation.” The same argument was advanced by Alok Sangwan, additional advocate general for Haryana.

Agreeing with the contentions, the apex court extended the deadline, but added that no other state should get the benefit of the extension.

The BF UH Son August 31 conducted the third round of counselling, and now, of 246 MBBS seats and 620 BDS seats in the third round, seven and 238 seats are still vacant, respectively.

The varsity will conduct physical counselling for the MBBS and BDS seats, respectively, on September 4 and 6.

“We could have allotted all the seats to the candidates in the third counselling itself. But heavy rain led to absolute mess. Students with high merit returned without participating in the counselling. We didn’t want to be unfair to anyone. Since the apex court had extended the deadline, we decided to conduct final counsel- ling for the left-out seats. Only fresh applications will be entertained now,” said a senior official of the university.

On August 18, BF U HS allotted 1,360 seats of undergraduate medical and dental studies in Punjab government institutes in the second round of counselling for state quota.

The state quota, including NRI seats, has 2,255 seats — 1,125 in MBBS (Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery) seats in eight colleges, and 1,130 in BDS (Bachelor of Dental Surgery) in 14 colleges.

Overall, the state has 85% seats in its quota, including NRI seats.

The rest are for students from across the country.