Court seeks information on vacant PG medical seats

Court seeks information on vacant PG medical seats

J. Venkatesan

New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Friday directed the governments of six States to furnish the list of candidates who had opted for the all-India quota for admission to post-graduate medical and dental courses.

Chief Secretaries and Health Secretaries of Tamil Nadu, Punjab, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Bihar and Jharkhand should send the list to the Directorate-General of Health Services.

A three-Judge Bench comprising Chief Justice K. G. Balakrishnan, Justice R.V. Raveendran and Justice M. K. Sharma, while giving this direction, extended the schedule till June 10 for conducting the second round of counselling for the admission process.

In its brief order, the Bench said that as per the schedule for admission to post-graduate medical and dental courses in the all-India quota and the State quota, April 15 was the last date for the States to furnish to the DGHS the number of students who had opted for the all-India quota for admission to the vacant seats.

The Bench directed the Chief Secretaries and Health Secretaries of the States which had not furnished the data to send it by May 10 so that the second round of counselling could be completed by June 10. The Bench made it clear that in the future the schedule should be strictly adhered to and data sent by April 24 as the admission process should be completed by May 31.

In an application, Amit Gupta and others submitted that as per the schedule the first round of State counselling was to be completed by April 15 and the last date for joining the allotted colleges was April 20. The second round of counselling was to be held by May 9 and for this the correct number of seats that had fallen vacant should be furnished by the States concerned.

This year six States had not completed the first round of counselling within the stipulated time.

They said that if the second round of counselling was held without the availability of data on vacant seats, these seats would be reverted to the States concerned. They sought a direction for rescheduling the second round of counselling after the DGHS obtained the data from the States.