The article titled “80% NRI medical seats vacant even after mop-up counselling” was published on 22nd August 2018 by Times of India. The article addresses the huge number of vacancies under NRI quota in deemed universities, in spite of three rounds of counselling in 2018. Is there a solution to this problem?
It is noted that there are not enough NRIs who are interested in the NRI category seats of deemed universities.
To explain this, let us look at the round 1 deemed universities counseling in 2018. There were about 917 NRI seats to start with in the round 1 counseling. But, only 176 seats were allotted during the round 1 counseling. Out of these 176 seats allotted, only 133 went ahead with joining the colleges. That is just 14.5% of the seats that were available.
This trend continued in further rounds. Finally, 692 seats were surrendered back to the respective deemed universities, after three rounds of counseling, with MCC expressing inability to fill these seats. It is sad that so many seats had to be surrendered back to the universities and allowed to be filled by the colleges themselves.
With most of the deemed universities not following a transparent admission process during stray vacancy round, it leads to corruption, black money and return to the days of non-centralized counselling. With such a huge number of seats at stake, it is important for MCC to direct the universities to convert the NRI seats to general management quota seats before the start of the DGHS mop-up round. Will they do it?
Why not the government re-look at the 15% reservation allowed for NRI category? Why don’t they reduce it to more practical numbers if the colleges are unable to fill these seats with eligible NRIs?
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