No takers for 700 dental seats in K’taka

No takers for 700 dental seats in K’taka

SruthySusan.Ullas@timesgroup.com

Beng aluru:16.02.2021 

At least 700 dental seats in Karnataka’s private medical colleges are likely to remain unfilled this year even after the Supreme Court relaxed admission criteria in early February.

There are 2,880 BDS seats in 44 dental colleges of the state. The colleges have so far filled 70% of the seats. While 167 had registered for the new round of counselling with the Karnataka Examinations Authority, 15 of them failed to pay fees.

In 2019, the number of seats that were vacant in the state was 291. Even if all the 150 new candidates take admission this year, around 700 seats are likely to go vacant, almost double of last year, sources said. February 18 is the last date for admissions.

On February 9, the SC ruled that reducing cutoff marks will not lower the quality of education and directed that the qualifying marks be lowered by 10 percentile. The qualifying mark for BDS became 40 percentile for general category and 30 percentile for SC/ST quota. The decision was taken in order to fill 7,000 vacant seats in the country for the academic year 2020-21.

“There could be two reasons for the increase in vacant seats this year,” said Dr Shivsharan, a Dental Council of India member. “One, there has been an addition of around 20,000 medical seats this year nationally. Also, with the next NEET in a few months, those students who did not do well and missed medical seats by a small difference in marks have another chance soon,” he said.

Dr Girish B Giraddi, dean and director, Government Dental College and Research Institute, said apart from the fear that the field has become saturated in cities, Covid played a major role in the large number of vacant seats.