Times
of India: Hyderabad: Saturday, 01 August 2015.
One month
after the counseling for post-graduate medical entrance test (PGMET-2015)
ended, the Dr NTR University of Health Sciences (NTRUHS) has revealed that a
staggering number of 200 of the 1860 convenor quota medical seats has remained
unfilled.
These 200 PG
medical seats in both clinical and non-clinical courses are spread over 28
medical colleges (both private and government) in both Telangana and Andhra
Pradesh, NTRUHS officials said in response to an application under Right to
Information Act, filed by PVVSN Murthy, an activist of Right to Information Act
(RTI) and advocate based in Kakinada.
Not
surprisingly, the information furnished by NTRUHS in its reply (a copy of which
is with TOI) to the RTI query, has sent shockwaves among the medical fraternity
as over 17,000 PG medical aspirants from the two states competed for the
limited convenor quota seats in 22 different streams.
"Any
medical student's dream is to get a PG seat in the convenor quota because of
affordable fee. So, how come 200 medical seats remain unfilled when they are
always in hot demand," questioned PVVSN Murthy. While hinting at a foul
play by NTRUHS administration, Murthy alleged that the varsity deliberately
kept the seats vacant to benefit private medical colleges' lobby in the two
states.
"Under
existing rules, if convenor quota seats remain vacant, the private medical
colleges in the two states are empowered to convert them into management quota
seats, which can then be sold to the highest bidder," alleged Murthy.
For the
record, the convenor quota PG medical seats (grouped under A and B category)
come with a fixed fee ranging from Rs 30,000 to Rs 80,000 per annum for
non-clinical/para-clinical subjects while for clinical subjects, the fixed fee
ranges Rs 20,000 to Rs 2.9 lakh per annum.
In contrast,
each management quota seat in clinical streams like Radiology, General
Medicine, Paediatrics, Dermatology and Anesthesia fetches Rs 80 lakh to Rs 2
crore for private medical colleges. Even para-clinical PG medical seats in
streams like Pathology and Pharmacology are sold for Rs 15 lakh to Rs 45 lakh,
say medicos.
"It
appears to be a well-planned conspiracy by vested interests to benefit certain
private medical colleges in the two states by allowing them to convert convenor
quota seats into management quota by leaving them unfilled. Unfortunately, this
practice will result in denial of higher education to PG aspirants "
alleged Dr K Ramesh Reddy, Medical Council of India (MCI) member. Explaining the
modus operandi further, Dr Ramesh Reddy said seats in convenor quota could have
remained vacant as the NTRUHS did not stick to MCI's 2015- PG admission
calendar while conducting counseling process this year. When contacted, Prof T
Ravi Raju, vice chancellor of NTRUHS, refuted allegations of any wrongdoing on
their part, explaining that no loss happened to medicos aspiring for convenor
quota seats in any way by their counseling schedule.
"The 200
vacant seats are actually 'excess' for which there were no takers in both
private and government medical colleges," he explained.
But, medicos
like Dr Vidya Sagar M, disagrees with the VC's view. "We would have opted
for 200 seats some of which are sought after clinical courses like Radiology,
General Medicine, Paediatrics, Dermatology and Anesthesia but the NTRUHS
administration kept us in dark during the counseling process," he said.
In fact, even
in their RTI reply, the NTRUHS cited that they did not have time to conduct a
third round of counseling as the MCI deadline to finish counseling was June 10.
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