Monday, May 14, 2018

117 PG medical seats returned to Tamil Nadu

TNN | Updated: May 9, 2018, 09:44 IST






CHENNAI: Out of 823 post-graduate medical seats that Tamil Nadu had surrendered to the Centre’s Director-General of Health Services (DGHS), a total of 117 have found no takers and hence returned to the state pool.

The number of seats returned to the state this year is much lower than those returned in 2017, when DGHS returned 335 out of 760 seats.

Tamil Nadu has a total of 1,646 PG medical seats at government-run medical colleges, and 823 seats were surrendered to the DGHS in March 2018 for centralised online counselling. At the end of two rounds of counselling and mop up counselling conducted by the DGHS, these 117 PG medical seats in different specialities found no takers, and hence returned to the state pool on April 23.

Now, there will be 940 PG medical seats available under the state quota in government colleges. In addition to these 940, there will seats from self-financing colleges, said state selection committee secretary Dr G Selvarajan.

While the DGHS has completed the procedure and some other states are in different stages of counselling, Tamil Nadu is yet to announce the date for counselling, as a government order detailing state policy on incentive marks for inservice candidates was struck down by Madras high court. The state is now waiting for a certified copy of the order so as to go on appeal to the Supreme Court.

In 2017, the postgraduate admission process was entangled in a legal battle at the high court. Admissions had to be cancelled and the process was stalled twice. The state government had given 50% of the seats to the all-India quota and reserved half of the remaining seats to doctors working with the government.

This year, a six-member committee under Tamil Nadu Medical Services Corporationchairman P Umanath used “hybrid” methods to work out difficult and remote areas based on terrain, doctor-patient ratio and vacancies in the government hospitals. It prescribed two groups that will receive benefits. The category A will receive 100% of the maximum permissible incentive marks – 10% of marks over and above their NEET score for every year, not exceeding 30%. The second group, category B, will receive 40% of the maximum permissible incentive marks – 4% of marks over and above their NEET score for every year, not exceeding 30%.

The court said the apex court had already said categories should be based on geographical locations and that the government policy was not in line with the Medical Council of India guidelines.

The state health officials said they would once again move the Supreme Court to admit students based on the government order. However, if apex court also strikes it down, the state may have to redo the order and complete admission process before the May 31 deadline. “We are racing against time because we have been told getting deadline extended is difficult, but we want to ensure the state policy is not harmed,” said director of medical education Dr A Edwin Joe.



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