41 apply for 300 NRI seats in MBBS, BDS courses

FARIDKOT:Only 41 candidates have registered for online counselling for 300 NRI seats in MBBS and BDS in private and government medical colleges in the state. Officials at the Baba Farid University of Health Sciences (BFUHS), Faridkot, the nodal agency for NEET 2017 admission this year, say a similar scenario is repeated every year.

The counselling is scheduled for August 4 “There are few NRI candidates and seats will be surplus. After the August 4 counselling, vacant NRI seats in government colleges will be merged with general quota seats. Seats in private colleges will be merged with management quota seats,” said a senior official with BFUHS.

For NRIs, 15% seats have been reserved in all private institutes and Guru Gobind Singh Medical College, Faridkot. Also, 13 seats each have been reserved in GovernmentMedicalCollege,Patiala and Amritsar, along with three seats in Government Dental College, Amritsar, and four in Patiala. There are 136 MBBS seats for NRI candidates — including 95 seats in private institutes and 41 seats in government colleges. In BDS, the state offers 157 seats in private colleges and seven in government institutes.

The second round of counselling for medical and dental admissions in state institutes will start on August 8. Students can fill online preferences of colleges till August 13. Allotment of seats will be done on August 18. “We are yet to get complete number of seats surrendered by students. That list will soon be compiled and students will vie for these seats in the second round of counselling,” said the officer. Candidates who fill the wrong category code will be treated as those from general category. PARENTS CRY FOUL; PROCESS FOLLOWED: VC Many parents have approached the higher education authorities claiming the university had wrongly allotted seats to candidates from other states.

BFUHS vice-chancellor Dr Raj Bahadur said, “Seats have been allotted strictly according to the notification of the state government. We have verified prospectus from 2001-2017 and all include the same eligibility notification.”.