Maharashtra scraps institutional round for private medical college MBBS admissions, introduces 2 year ban for seat blocking

Mumbai: The Maharashtra government has changed the admission process for undergraduate medical and dental courses in private medical colleges by removing the institutional round and bringing all admissions under the centralised counselling process conducted by the State Common Entrance Test (CET) Cell.

Medical Dialogues had reported earlier that the state government was mulling scrapping the institutional round for private medical colleges. The proposal was put forward by the State Common Entrance Test (CET) Cell and already received approval from the Directorate of Medical Education and Research (DMER). It was awaiting the state government’s final nod before the upcoming admission session.

Now, with the final nod from the state government, all undergraduate and postgraduate medical admissions in Maharashtra would be conducted solely through the CET Cell's centralised admission process, leaving private colleges with little independent discretion in the final allocation of seats.

Private medical and dental colleges will no longer be allowed to conduct separate institutional rounds to fill vacant seats. Instead, all admissions, including stray vacancy rounds, will be carried out through the Common Admission Process (CAP) managed by the CET Cell.

The Medical Education and Drugs Department issued the revised admission rules on Thursday. 

Earlier, seats that remained vacant after the CAP rounds were returned to private colleges, which conducted their own institutional rounds before the admission deadline. This system had often been criticised by students, parents and activists over concerns about transparency and high fee demands.

A CET Cell official told The Indian Express, "Now that all admissions have to be through CAP, the CET Cell will conduct admissions till the cut-off date. If seats remain vacant even after that, they will remain vacant, with no possibility of an institutional round. This will compel colleges to fill as many seats as possible instead of avoiding candidates to keep seats for the institutional round, which used to happen."

The government has also introduced a strict rule to discourage seat blocking. Candidates who are allotted a seat in the final counselling round but fail to join, leaving the seat vacant, will not be allowed to participate in undergraduate medical and dental admissions in Maharashtra for the next two academic years.

Commenting on this, the official said, "The new penalty is also meant to cut seat blocking. The compulsion to take admission on the seat allotted in the final round will automatically reduce seat blocking. Students will no longer be able to decline a seat in the hope of securing a better option through an institutional round."

However, the revised rules continue to allow a "free exit" after the first CAP round, meaning candidates can withdraw without penalty at that stage. Students who give up their allotted seats after the third CAP round will remain ineligible to participate in the following counselling rounds, as per the existing rules.

Also read- Maha likely to scrap institutional round for medical admissions