‘Punitive clause’ leads to a drop in vacant MBBS seats

NEW DELHI: Punitive measures, including forfeiture of security deposit up to ₹2 lakh introduced last year led to a sharp decline in the number of students attempting to block MBBS seats by not taking up admission after giving every indication that they plan to.

In academic session 2017-18, 3,300 seats remained vacant in medical colleges across the country after all rounds of admission and counselling; this year, the number of vacant seats came down to 300, according to the health ministry’s analysis of the National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test (NEET) data.

The number of seats left in so-called super-specialty courses also fell from 571 in 2017-18 to 189 in 2018-19 after the forfeiture clause was introduced.

“The benefit of having common counselling is that you can monitor seat distribution. We received several complaints of candidates blocking seats with no intention of doing the course, so we thought of adding a punitive clause to the admission process to ensure genuine students were not denied admission,” said Arun Singhal, additional secretary, health ministry. There are usually two regular rounds of counselling, and a mop-up round, for candidates.

According to the new rule,

there is no penalty if a candidate gets admission in the first round but doesn’t take it up.

In the second round, candidates who secure admission but don’t take it up forfeit their security deposit. Wasting a seat in the mop-up round renders a candidate ineligible for further counselling in the academic session. The ministry has also proposed filing a police complaint against candidates found accepting money to block a seat.

“There were also several allegations that the seats (remaining vacant on account of such behaviour) were allotted to candidates of much lower merit later in stray vacancy rounds conducted at Deemed Universities for a very high fee,” said a health ministry official who asked not to be identified. The first round reprieve has been given for those students who participate in the next round despite securing a seat because they want to move to a better college.