Medical colleges will lose one seat from quota for each wrongful admission

NEW DELHI: Medical colleges manipulating rules to admit students will have to surrender a seat from their sanctioned quota for every confirmed case of “wrongful admission”, a health ministry official told Hindustan Times on Tuesday on the condition of anonymity.

“Until now, only students (illegally admitted) had their admission cancelled, but often colleges are at fault. The Postgraduate Medical Education Regulations (PGMER), 2000 has been amended to penalise colleges at fault,” the official added.

Wrongful admissions range from faking qualifying certificates to overlooking minimum or maximum age, choice of subjects in the qualifying school examination, and low cut-off percentage, among other things.

“Colleges that lose seats will have to start from scratch by reapplying for the seats and passing an inspection by Medical Council of India to be able to admit students again,” said Dr Reena Nayyar, secretary, Medical Council of India (MCI).

Students who are disqualified on being found guilty cannot apply for admission in the same academic session and will have to sit for the national eligibility cum entrance test (NEET) again.

“We get quite a few complaints each year, with the number sometimes crossing 100,” said Nayyar. India has about 38,000 PG seats in medicine for students who want to specialise or super-specialise.

The amended regulations will apply not only to private medical colleges but to government colleges as well.

To eliminate back-door admissions, the notification also bans colleges from admitting students after May 31 for post graduate courses and August 31 for super speciality courses.

THE PGMER’S AMENDED REGULATIONS WILL APPLY NOT ONLY TO PRIVATE MEDICAL COLLEGES BUT TO GOVERNMENT MEDICAL COLLEGES AS WELL