The Bengal government will conduct manual counsellings in the final stages of admission in the undergraduate medical courses after the Supreme Court passed an order saying that all the states must conduct the medical counsellings manually so that no seats remain vacant in medical colleges.
The process of online medical counsellings were started from 2013 as a result of which, many of the medical seats were found to have been lying vacant even after the admission procedures concluded.
As per the Supreme Court's recent verdict, the first two counsellings could be conducted online but the final stages of counselling must be conducted manually by the state governments or by the authorities designated by the state government. In the past few years, the Bengal government, like many others, has been conducting all the counsellings online.
The Apex Court has given the verdict after it had observed that many of the undergraduate medical seats often remain vacant after the admission process is concluded.
The order said that the state governments should conduct manual counsellings for allotment of students in the vacant seats. After the completion of counselling, the state governments should determine the number of seats that remain vacant and they must forward a list of students in order of merit, ten times the number of vacant seats to the medical colleges so that in case of a seat lying vacant following a transfer of a candidate, the respective state governments or the designated authorities can fill up the seats.
It may be mentioned that till the last academic year, there were three rounds of counsellings followed by a mop up counselling. But the counsellings were held online. As there were no manual counsellings, the seats would have been lying vacant after a candidate gets transferred to other college or he/she pursues some other stream. Prior to 2013, all the medical counsellings used to be held manually. Candidates would have appeared physically at a medical college during the medical counselling.
The Supreme Court has observed that it has been noticed over a period of time that when students report to a college after the counselling, they are refused admission by the colleges on some pretext or the other and it is shown by the colleges as if the students never reported to the college for admission. The Apex Court also maintained that if the demand draft is deposited by the admission or counselling committee, then there would be no scope for colleges to refuse admission to any student.
The students who secure admission in MBBS course should deposit a demand draft in favour of admission or counselling committee as fees payable to various institutions. The admission or counselling committee shall forward the demand draft to the respective institution or college or university.
Dr A K Maity, an expert in the field of medical education in the state said that the undergraduate medical seats in various medical colleges often lay vacant because of the faulty system of conducting online counsellings that fail to fill up the vacant seats. This also leads to a huge loss of various state governments.
Considering the seriousness of the matter, the Supreme Court has passed an order asking the states to conduct the first two counsellings
online but the counselling at the final stage of selecting candidates must be conducted manually till all the vacant seats are filled up, Dr Maity maintained.