Colleges must not ‘book’ seats before allotment: BFUHS

Faridkot: Baba Farid University of Health Sciences (BFUHS), Faridkot, on Saturday, warned colleges against fleecing nursing candidates by booking seats even before the varsity allots it colleges. Only the varsity is authorised to allot seats on basis of the merit during counselling.

Agents working for the colleges contact students and influence them to apply or book a seat with the colleges they work for.

They offer help to students to fill preferences of colleges online and they deliberately fill only one preference — the name of the desired college.

The issue came to light after a few parents of BSc nursing candidates approached the university to confirm if colleges can book seats even before the varsity allots colleges.

BFUHS vice-chancellor Dr Raj Bahadur said, “The university has learnt that certain colleges are fleecing the candidates by giving only one option at the time of filling the college of their choice / preference at the time of submitting the online application for the candidates, by themselves. This is contrary to the purpose of submitting choice/ preference online where a candidate can opt for more than one college of his/her choice after qualifying the Punjab Para Medical Entrance Test (PPMET-2017) that the BFUHS has conducted.”

He added, “Colleges are booking seats for the candidates before the BFUHS allots any. Candidates should be clear that the colleges allotted to them will be the one that BFUHS will allot on the mandated day as mentioned in the counselling schedule. Any promise/claim that the seat alloted will be the same as the one promised/booked by respective colleges before counselling is meaningless.”

To curb the practice, counselling will go the paper-pen route. “In the first round , nursing students were asked to fill online preferences and colleges will be allotted to them on August 18. We have decided to conduct physical counselling in second round.”