Friday, June 19, 2015

Hold counselling but don't promise medical seats: HC

CHENNAI: Ambiguity over smooth conduct of MBBS counseling this year continued on Thursday, with the Madras high court asking why it should not direct the authorities not to issue admit cards to students selected for the course. The six-day counselling for MBBS admissions in the state begins on Friday. A division bench headed by Justice Satish K Agnihotri also observed that authorities cannot give any assurance to the students participating in the counselling.

As the bench sought to either stay or put a rider to the counselling process, when a petition filed by nearly 70 Class 12 students of the 2015 batch came up for hearing, special government pleader D Krishna Kumar opposed any interim order that would disrupt the counselling. He sought time till Friday to submit the government's views. The petition wanted the court to prevent students of previous batches from taking part in the counseling.

The court proceedings have put a question mark on the counselling process involving more than 31,000 students. Students of the 2015 batch say that taking advantage of low cutoff marks this year, 4,679 students from previous batches have applied for MBBS seats. Expressing apprehensions that nearly 50% of the seats on offer could be garnered by the previous batch candidates, counsel V Raghavachari said it would wreak havoc with the lives of students from the fresh batch.

That the 2014 batch saw 5,055 centum scorers in core subjects of physics, chemistry and biology, and the year 2015 saw only 1,560 centum scorers would give an indication of the magnitude of the cutoff disparity, adversely affecting all categories of students this year.

TOI has been writing about the brewing trouble involving previous and present batches of Class 12 students in securing MBBS seats for about a week now. The issue has reached a boiling point, as though there is no bar on commencing and continuing the counselling, authorities may not be able to issue admission cards on the spot while the case is being argued in court.

In their joint appeal, the latest batch students said allowing candidates from previous years to compete with them would result in treating unequals as equals. Referring to a single judge order saying the participation of previous year students in counselling this year would be subject to the outcome of the writ petition, they said the order failed to quell the controversy. On the other hand, it conferred right on ineligible ones to claim equity, they said.

It cannot be said there is uniformity in setting up of the papers or in its valuation, the petitioners said, adding that the total number of MBBS seats available this year is 2,808. The number of students from previous years is 4,679. "A sizable numbers of students who wrote the examination in 2014-15 are likely to be kept away from the process of selection to the professional course,"their petition said.

Referring to publication of random numbers for MBBS/BDS admission, the students said it showed that a majority of students from previous academic years would topple the 2015 batch students during MBBS counselling. "Proceeding with the counselling without determining the issue on hand would cause hardship to all participants as well as the state,"they said, justifying their appeal against the single judge order.

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