Tamil Nadu Private Medical Colleges Convert NRI Quota MBBS seats into General Category

Chennai: Taking note of the vacancies in the NRI quota seats, around four deemed universities belonging to Tamil Nadu and Puducherry have recently converted their MBBS seats under the NRI quota into general category seats.

The NRI quota seats cost around US$50,000 to US$60,000 (41lakh to 49lakh) annually, which is pretty expensive when compared to the cost of general category seats (between Rs 18 lakh to Rs 26 lakh per annum).

However, considering the fact that these expensive seats remain unfilled even after the mop-up round, several colleges are converting them already and some institutes have reduced the number of seats to a minimum three seats.

For instance, this year, Chennai-based Saveetha Medical College, Salem-based Vinayaka Mission Medical College and Puducherry-based Arupadai Veedu Medical College have converted the NRI quota seats to general category in Round 1 and SRM Medical college has reduced these seats to only three.

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As per the rules, it is the Medical Selection Committee under the Directorate General of Health Services that conducts the MBBS admission in deemed universities along with the central government medical colleges and all-India quota seats of state medical institutes. The rules further allow the colleges to reserve up to 15% of their seats for the NRI category students.

The recent media report by the Times of India adds that after remaining vacant, the unfilled NRI quota seats gets converted to general category at the last minute and several seats go wasted. Therefore, this year several medical institutes opted for a different course and did not want to register the vacant seats for long in the seat matrix and they have started converting the seats from Round 1 of the counselling.

Referring to the vacant NRI quota seats, a parent of an MBBS aspirant told the daily, "Almost all these seats in several colleges remain vacant for at least two rounds of counselling and another mop-up round. They are converted as general category seats at the last minute and still many seats are not filled. These seats are then returned to the respective colleges a few hours before the deadline for counselling closes. Seats that were not filled through three rounds of counselling get filled in a few hours in several colleges."

"It is better to have seats in the general pool early because the chances of them getting filled are higher," added a student counsellor in this context.

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