The Hindu : Karnataka / Bangalore News : CET general counselling begins with reduced seats

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Thursday, Jun 07, 2007
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Karnataka

Karnataka - Bangalore

CET general counselling begins with reduced seats

Staff Reporter

A PATIENT WAIT: Students and parents waiting for their turn at the counselling session in Bangalore on Wednesday. — Photo: K. Gopinathan

BANGALORE: As the first 2,000 medical/dental rank holders queued up in front of the Common Entrance Test (CET) Cell to select the seats on offer, the Medical Council of India (MCI) had a surprise in store for them. The council had asked the Cell not to admit students in the admission round for four private medical colleges and three proposed government colleges pending its approval.

But Medical Education Minister V.S. Acharya and Higher Education Minister D.H. Shankaramurthy were quick to promise the candidates that these seats would be allotted in the casual vacancy round. The Ministers formally launched the seat selection process for all general candidates outside the special categories on Wednesday.

Once the three new government colleges are approved — the Ministers were "one hundred per cent confident" of getting the MCI green signal — , 300 more MBBS seats would be added to the Government's kitty. But 60 seats would be lost because the Sri Devaraj Urs Medical College was recently conferred the "Deemed-to-be-University" status by the University Grants Commission (UGC) and thus would admit all students on its own.

Mr. Shankaramurthy said the Government was hopeful of getting five more engineering colleges for the State this year. The top three CET medical and engineering rank-holders were awarded cash prizes of Rs. 5,000, Rs. 4,000 and Rs. 3,000 respectively. Medical toppers, Karan Shetty, Vinay B., and Amina Asfiya, selected seats in the Bangalore Medical College.

Addressing the other candidates and parents awaiting their turn to select a seat, Mr. Shankaramurthy reminded them of their responsibility towards society.

He had a point: "The Government spends Rs. 5.30 lakh a year to educate one medical student, but the seats are offered for about Rs. 14,000 and Rs. 42,000. The high cost is compensated through the taxpayers' money. You need to be grateful to society. The Government has recognised your merit and efforts and you should give it back to society," he told the students.

Of the institutions where the MCI has kept admissions in abeyance, the Mangalore-based Kasturba Medical College has 92 government quota medical seats and the Chitradurga-based Basaveshwara Medical College and Hospital has 20 seats, while the Kempegowda Institute of Medical Sciences and Sri Siddhartha Medical College, Tumkur, have 40 seats each.

Derecognised

With the Visvesvaraya Technological University disaffiliating and derecognising four engineering colleges, the CET quota will come down by 1,140 engineering seats this year. However, as the Government quota has gone up to 55 per cent from 40 per cent last year, the overall seats to be allotted through the CET Cell has increased from 21,973 to 26,517 this year, according to Mr. Shankaramurthy.

The colleges that will go out of the engineering seat matrix this year are: Impact College of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Bangalore; SCT Institute of Technology, Bangalore; SECAB Institute of Technology, Bijapur; and Nadgir Institute of Engineering and Technology, Bangalore.

NRI quota

On NRI (non-resident Indian) quota in government medical colleges, Mr. Acharya said that the 15 per cent quota will be introduced only next year in colleges that had completed five years. New government colleges will not be covered. The Government had proposed the quota to compensate for the cost incurred in increasing the salaries of its medical college faculty.

The proposed move had angered the private college managements, which threatened to walk out of the consensus agreement next year.

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