Only 75 apply for 549 vacant BDS seats

FARIDKOT : As NEET (UG) 2022 is just two months away, only 75 eligible candidates applied for 549 vacant seats in private dental colleges in the state during the fifth round of counselling by the Baba Farid University of Health Sciences (BFUHS) at Faridkot.

After four rounds of counselling for admissions to undergraduate dental courses, 43% of BDS seats remained vacant in 10 private dental colleges in Punjab. Following this, the BFUHS started the second mop-up round for admissions to vacant BDS seats. However, as per the provisional merit list displayed by the medical university, there were only 75 eligible students, who had applied for the admissions.

The National Testing Agency (NTA) will conduct the NEET UG 2022 on July 17. As per experts, most of the medical students prefer MBBS and they only move towards BDS after they fail to secure a better rank in NEET. So it is likely that many would prefer to reappear with the hope of getting an MBBS seat or BDS seat in a government college as NEET is just two months away. There are two government colleges in the state offering 90 BDS seats in the state, which were filled in the second round of counselling.

Of 1,240 BDS seats in 14 private colleges in Punjab, 549 were left vacant after the fourth round. According to data provided by the BFUHS, only four private colleges — Christian Dental College, Ludhiana (40); SGRD institute, Amritsar (60); Baba Jaswant Singh college, Ludhiana (100); and SKSS dental college, Ludhiana (40) — managed to fill all their BDS seats.

Meanwhile, eight colleges could not even fill 50% of the seats after four rounds, with Gian Sagar Dental College, Patiala — which was allowed an intake of 100 BDS seats after a gap of four years — filling just 16, lowest among all colleges.

Vacancies in BDS courses have been a matter of concern for years now. In 2014, 104 of the then 1,190 seats were left vacant, and the number surged to 540 the next year and remained high thereon. Even after lowering the qualifying cut-off percentile by 10 points for each category, the number of vacant BDS seats stood at 355 in the 2019-20 session and jumped to 503 in 2021-22.

Apart from Punjab, many other states also failed to fill a large chunk of their BDS seats in private medical colleges this year after concluding the counselling process.

Following this, the Union ministry of health and family welfare directed the Medical Counselling Committee (MCC) to hold a second mop-up round and stray vacancy for the academic session 2021-22 and also extended the last date of admission to the BDS course for dental colleges to May 15.

AFTER 4 ROUNDS OF COUNSELLING FOR ADMISSIONS TO UG DENTAL COURSES, 43% OF BDS SEATS WERE VACANT IN 10 PRIVATE COLLEGES