BANGALORE: Even as the Karnataka High Court took five private medical colleges to task for not admitting students to the MBBS course on the basis of merit for 2004-2005, the Rajiv Gandhi University of Health Sciences (RGUHS) has unearthed several other discrepancies by more medical and dental colleges while admitting students.

Some of the colleges have gone ahead with the admission process without conducting entrance tests and there have been cases of students having been admitted under the NRI/foreign quota, even though they are not permitted by the Supreme Court to do so.

In all, 10 private medical colleges, nine religious and linguistic minority medical colleges and 39 private dental colleges have violated the norms laid down by the university for admission to first year MBBS and BDS courses under the management quota, according to RGUHS authorities.

As many as 40 students were admitted to the MBBS course and more than 400 admitted to the BDS course in various colleges without conducting the entrance test.

According to Y.J. Visweswara Reddy, Registrar (Evaluation), RGUHS, many of the institutions had admitted students who got lower ranks in the entrance test and not admitted those who had better ranks (De hors merit).

Moreover, irregularities were found in admissions made by the minority institutions.

Certificates

It was found that students had produced certificates saying that they belonged to a particular religious or linguistic minority though in reality it was not so.

"It is clear from the documents and from the names of the students and their parents that they did not belong to a minority community. But the colleges have admitted these students without raising objections," he said.

Penalty

In cases where `de hors merit' admissions were made, the university has decided to impose a penalty of Rs.1 lakh per candidate in the case of medical colleges and Rs. 50,000 in the case of dental colleges, Dr. Reddy said.

In case of candidates who were admitted without an entrance test, the college would be asked to discharge the students while those colleges who had wrongly admitted students under NRI quota would be penalised with a fine of Rs. 2 lakh and would be warned with disaffiliation if the mistake was repeated.

Decision hailed

The Consortium of Medical Engineering and Dental Colleges of Karnataka (COMED- K) has hailed the Karnataka High Court for pulling up the errant institutions which had "wilfully breached" the norms of the admission process.

A COMED-K representative said the consortium had conducted the entrance test in a fair and transparent manner but the five medical institutions that had not gone by merit while admitting students under the management quota had breached the norms.

By doing so, they had tried to tarnish the image of COMED-K, he said.

Printer friendly page  
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail