STATE GOVT ISSUES TWO KEY ORDERS

STATE GOVT ISSUES TWO KEY ORDERS

50% super-specialty, PG med seats for govt doctors in TN

Pushpa Narayan & K Sureshkumar TNN

Chennai:10.11.2020

The Tamil Nadu government on Monday issued two crucial orders concerning post-graduate and super-specialty medical courses. While GO (463) reserved at least 50% of PG medical seats for in-service government doctors, the other GO (462) reserved the entire 50% state quota super-specialty medical seats for in-service candidates.

The new admission policy for MD/MS and MDS courses will come into force in 2021, and for the PG super-specialty (DM/MCh) courses, it will come into effect in 2020. The inservice candidates availing themselves of these two categories of seats have to sign a bond pledging to remain in government service till superannuation.

That these GOs have been issued was disclosed in the Madras high court when Justice N Anand Venkatesh took up a batch of cases filed by in-service medicos for further hearing.

On Monday, when the central government wanted the court to defer the hearing till the Supreme Court decides a similar issue pending before it, P Wilson, senior counsel for serving doctors, pointed out that the case before the apex court had nothing to do with the present petition and that it would not come in the way of the Tamil Nadu government granting 50% in-service reservation.

Concurring with the submission, Justice Anand Venkatesh refused to defer the hearing. He then recorded the stand of the state government and disposed of the plea.

ALL SUCH SEATS FOR SERVICE CANDIDATES

‘Need more super-specialists to offer high end surgeries for free’

After surrendering 50% of PG medical seats in government colleges and government share of seats in self-financing to All India Quota for admission by the Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS), the state will be left with 50% of seats. Of this 50% of the seats – that is 25% of the overall seats – will be reserved for inservice candidates. The remaining seats will be for the open category, where all students, including non-service candidates from the state, can apply.

But in case of super-specialty seats, the order says all 50% of seats reserved for the state will be for in-service candidates from this academic year. “This difference was introduced because since 2016 counselling for all super-specialty seats was done by the DGHS purely based on NEET ranking. In case of PG, the state selection committee conducted counselling for 50% of state quota seats. This year, we asked for 50% of seats. We cannot reserve seats for the open category from this,” said Director of Medical Education Dr R Narayana Babu.

“Last year, we had just 10 students from government service in super-specialty courses. We have more than two dozen medical colleges and we are planning to add 11 more. We need more superspecialists who can offer high end surgeries free of cost to our patients,” he said.