60% of dental seats vacant in K’taka

60% of dental seats vacant in K’taka

Deepthi.Sanjiv@timesgroup.com

Mangaluru:11.01.2021

With nearly 60% of over 2,800 seats in Karnataka not filled after the second round of counselling by the Karnataka Examinations Authority, a member of the Dental Council of India (DCI) has suggested relaxing the eligibility criteria.

DCI member Dr Shivasharan told TOI that 1,678 of the 2,834 seats are vacant and he met medical education minister K Sudhakar in this regard with a request that the NEET eligibility be lowered by 20 percentile points as per the DCI recommendation.

The member has said, in a letter to the minister, that BDS seats were vacant in Karnataka and other states in the past too. “To tide over the situation of vacant seats, the ministry of health and family welfare had lowered the eligibility of NEET percentile in the previous years and extended the last date of BDS admission 15 days beyond the last date of medical admission.”

The ministry promptly extended the last date for the 2020-21BDS admissions from January 15 to January 30. “We hope that the government will look into the percentile issue,” he added.

Dr Shivasharan said a key reason for seat vacancy is that many colleges have upgraded their infrastructure and increased student intake. For instance, the colleges which used to offer 150 medical seats have increased the intake to 250.

Rajiv Gandhi University of Health Sciences will start a regional centre in Mangaluru and the DCI will set up a dental research lab at Maryhill. The country has 313 dental institutes and Karnataka has 44.

“A dental research lab will be a boon, especially to postgraduate students dependent on medical research labs or NITK labs for their thesis. It will have full-time dedicated staff for dental research. The tendering process is expected to commence soon,” said Shivasharan.

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