No additional seats as NMC won’t inspect colleges due to Covid

No additional seats as NMC won’t inspect colleges due to Covid

TIMES NEWS NETWORK

Chennai:15.09.2021

Increase of 100 additional seats sought for a government medical college in Coimbatore and nearly 300 additional seats sought by at least three self-financing colleges and deemed universities will not be added to the seat matrix this year as the National Medical Council’s medical assessment and rating board (MARB) has said it will not be able to send teams to inspect these colleges due to Covid-19.

The directorate of medical education had sought to increase seats in Coimbatore Medical College from 150 to 250 as part of the plan to increase strength in existing medical colleges. Others including SRM Medical College and Chennai Medical College Trichy had applied for an increase of at least 100 seats each. Approval for additional seats is granted after a detailed inspection by the NMCappointed committee.

The commission, which sent teams for inspection at the peak of the second wave to most colleges including to the 11 new institutions in TN until the second week of August, denied inspections later. In the last week of August, it wrote to medical colleges and state governments saying applications for increase of seats for 2021-22 will be carried to the next academic year.

The letter said applications for increase in seats can’t be processed due to constraints of sending assessors to physically inspect colleges. Sources said the members discussed the possibility of permitting all applicants to admit students for this year but decided not to do so without physical assessment of infrastructure and faculty.

Most medical colleges, which had created infrastructure and appointed additional faculty, were disappointed. One of them even moved the Madras high court seeking intervention. On September 8, Justice N Anand Venkatesh said records show NMC inspections were held until May 19 but cited “prevailing pandemic situation” in a letter dated August 27 to postpone inspection. The court, he said, “Is not convinced with the reason … since the situation has not worsened after 19.06.2021.” Posting the case for Wednesday, the court asked NMC to explain if there is any scope for conducting another inspection to decide on the college’s request.