NEET examinees to have permanent roll number

New Delhi: In an attempt to make the medical admission process more transparent, the government has decided to issue a permanent admission roll number to National Eligibility Cum Entrance Test (NEET), qualified students. The permanent roll number would be generated after registering with the Medical Council of India's (MCI) software, which has been developed to put a check on malpractices in the admission process.

According to a senior Health Ministry official, the software has been developed under the initiative of Digital Mission Mode Project (DMMP), which would be rolled out from the next year.

With the introduction of the software, students can't hold back more than two seats and the issued roll number/ registration number would be permanent. Even if a student wants to change his college, his roll number would be same as no new roll number would be generated by the college.

"The MCI has developed about 28 such modules and this is one among those to make medical admission more transparent. The move to issue a permanent roll number would help in monitoring admission process in different colleges--- both government and private," the official said.

"The launch of software would help in checking frauds such as admitting a low-rank holder, admitting more students than the approved seats, filling the backlog seats, etc. The roll number generated after registering with MCI software would be linked to Aadhaar number, which would help in authenticating the identity of students," the official said.

"Given that some medical colleges don't provide the correct admission figures to the MCI even after several reminders, the government and MCI would be able to monitor the whole admission process on a real-time basis. With the help of the software, MCI would able to know the exact time of admission and the number

of vacant seats soon after the end of the last date of admission," a senior MCI official said.

There are about 65,000 medical seats in the country and out of which about 35,000 seats are in government medical colleges.