Students with lower NEET scores may get preference in R2

Students with lower NEET scores may get preference in R2

Pushpa.Narayan@timesofindia.com 15.09.2024 

Chennai : The state committee for medical admission’s bid to keep the counselling process simple and quick may end up giving medical college seats to candidates with lower NEET scores. While authorities say this is the only way to address the multiple upgradation requests from those allotted seats in the first round, and the system getting bogged down in an infinite loop, experts say it will undermine inter-se merit and be in violation of Supreme Court orders.

 The state committee, which conducts counselling for the state quota of seats in govt medical colleges and all seats in self-financing medical colleges, has completed admission for round 1 based on NEET and the rule of reservation. As more than 1,000 seats are vacant because students have opted to take “free exit,” some students opted for an upgrade in the second round. If seats in colleges of choice are available, students who opted to upgrade will be accommodated.

This, in turn, will leave a vacancy in their previously chosen institutions. For instance, if a student allotted to Govt Stanley Medical College opts to upgrade to Madras Medical College, the seat in Stanley will be vacant. That’s when the problems arise. The selection committee has told participants that the allotment to this seat will be made in “descending order, not in ascending order.” That is, the next available student who asks for the seat will get it, even if there are students with higher marks waiting for the same seat. “If a student with rank 100 is moved to MMC from Stanley and a student with rank 101 is asking for a seat in Stanley, he or she will get it even if a student with rank 97 or 98 is waiting for the seat,” said a senior official in the state selection committee.

 “I have said it in a simple way; usually, there are multiple requests for an upgrade. The system goes into a loop and reaches a point of an infinite loop. When this happens, the system does not work. There is no allocation of seats. So, we decided to keep programming less complicated,” said a senior official. Students and parents, however, argue that they must look at options to prevent looping. “The  infinite loop is because of infinite options. Students must not be allowed a free exit. 

A student who is allowed to exit must not be allowed to participate in the counselling process. If this happens, upgrades will come down and reduce the risk of infinite looping,” said Raguram R, whose son is awaiting medical admissions this year. Student counsellors such as Manikavel Arumugam point out that allotments based on descending order will violate the Supreme Court mandate. “This will lead to needless litigation again,” he said. “The counselling process must be simple and transparent,” he said.