by Moiz Mannan
Frequent flip-slops by the state governments, ever-changing policies of top education governing bodies and incessant legal wrangling continue to dog non-resident Indians wishing to admit their children in professional courses in India.
In the midst of the uncertainty, there is good news this time as well as some developments that raise concern for NRI students and parents.
There are reports that the government of the south Indian state of Andhra Pradesh has issued orders giving NRIs 15 per cent of management quota seats in medical and dental graduation courses. The quota seats can be filled in unaided non-minority colleges for the MBBS and BDS programmes.
The quota will be implemented from 2013-14. As has been commonly misunderstood or deliberately touted by some private colleges, this is not a 15 per cent quota out of the entire sanctioned intake of these colleges. The 15 per cent seats will come only out of the 40 per cent management quota seats.
The government is reported to have cited Supreme Court rulings regarding the NRI quota in admissions with reference to the TMA Pai and Inamdar cases. These quota seats can be filled in unaided non minority colleges, according to the government. Various medical and dental colleges had moved the government to allow filling up of 15 percent seats under NRI quota. Candidates whose parents are NRIs are eligible to apply for these seats. At the time of admission, they have to submit an affidavit and bonafide certificate.
According to government sources, there are 3,200 MBBS seats in unaided non-minority private medical colleges in Andhra Pradesh. Of these, 1280 seats, or forty percent would come under the management quota. Therefore, the 15 per cent NRI quota carved out this segment would come to 192 seats. There are seventeen private dental colleges and NRI quota seats in these colleges will come to about 52.
The candidates who want to take admission under this quota have to submit proof that they are the children of NRI parents. The seats have to be filled based on the marks secured by the candidates. The government order does not offer any clarification on the fee that claimants of the NRI quota would have to pay. In may be recalled that in May this year, the Supreme Court had allowed private medical colleges and a consortium of colleges across the country to declare the results of entrance examinations they conducted and on that basis make admissions to postgraduate, MBBS and dental courses for 2013-14.
A Bench of Chief Justice Altamas Kabir and Justices Anil R Dave and Vikramajit Sen, in a modified order, said the results of the entrance examinations had been withheld in view of the court’s December 13, 2012 interim order on 115 petitions challenging the validity of the National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test (NEET) notified by the Medical Council of India. “While the matters were being heard, we had been informed by senior counsel appearing for Christian Medical College, Vellore, and the Karnataka Private Medical and Dental College that a large number of students… would lose a year if the bar on declaration of their results was not lifted.”
The CJI, writing the order, said the challenge to the MCI notification gave rise to a wide range of submissions involving the competence of the Medical Council of India to introduce such a test which denudes the different medical colleges across the country of any control over their entrance examinations and admissions.
Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, and several associations of private medical colleges, among others, had filed petitions in their respective High Courts and obtained an interim stay on NEET applicability to them. Aggrieved, the MCI filed transfer petitions and these cases stood transferred to the Supreme Court to avoid multiplicity of proceedings.
Meanwhile, another piece of good news for Andhra NRIs is that Guntur Medical College has been sanctioned another 50 seats in addition to the existing 150 MBBS seats. The MCI has approved additional intake from the academic year 2013-14.
Apart from this, Nizamabad Medical College has also got 100 MBBS seats for this year. A total of 400 additional seats have been sanctioned this year to Government Medical Colleges in Andhra Pradesh. With this, the total MBBS seats in government medical colleges in AP has reached 2,400.
On the other hand, in Punjab there is a picture of confusion over NRI quota in the medical (MBBS), dental (BDS) and post-graduate medical courses (MD, MDS and MS) in various private and government colleges. Each year, over 100 Indian and overseas students take admission under the NRI quota.
But due to confusion this time, the Baba Farid University of Health Sciences (BFUHS) could fill only two of the total 20 NRI seats for MD, MDS, and MS courses in Punjab during the last two days.
The confusion was caused after contradictory notifications made by the Medical Council of India (MCI), the Dental Council of India (DCI) and the Punjab Government.
In the notification at the time of holding the National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test (NEET) for under-graduate (MBBS, BDS) and post-graduate (MD, MS, MDS) courses, the MCI and the DCI did not clearly mention that the test was also compulsory for NRI quota seats. So many aspiring NRI medics did not appear in the NEET.
But in its notification on June 5, the Punjab Government declared that only those candidates, who have qualified the NEET-2013, shall be eligible to apply for all seats, including NRI quota seats.
The late notification of the Punjab Government disqualified hundreds of aspirants for NRI seats, who did not appear in the NEET.
