Controversy: Clash between Telangana and Andhra students over top MBBS seats
Telangana: Controversy has erupted over the MBBS counselling process in Telangana as many of the state medical aspirants are allegedly being deprived of the opportunity to join top rank institutions like Gandhi and Osmania medical colleges since many students heralding from Andhra Pradesh have secured admission under 'unreserved quota' following a faulty admission process.
According to a recent report by Deccan Chronicle, KNRUHS was allegedly not following the admission norms during phase 2 of counselling as almost 40 students from Andhra Pradesh have secured seats in Government Colleges of Telangana who are otherwise ineligible to secure a medical seat.
It is reported that in the process of counselling, the seats under the 'unreserved' category in which students compete for seats irrespective of their local status, caste and region are being converted into a reserved category for non-local students. Many of the medical students who got admission in Gandhi and Osmania Medical Colleges under the unreserved category in phase 2 counselling actually belong to either Andhra Pradesh university or Sri Venkateswara University (SVU) regions and the same goes for many other government colleges in Telangana state also.
According to the admission rules, 15% of seats in each college remain unreserved and the remaining 85% is exclusively kept for local students. The phase 1 counselling was held strictly by this procedure in both the state of Telangana and AP. However, during phase 2 counselling a student who has already secured a seat in Telangana state under the local quota should be given the opportunity to push up to the unreserved quota if he or she is more eligible on the basis of merit than the non-local medicos. Hence there will be vacancies in the local quota and a local Telangana student will be able to seek admission under 'local quota'.
Deccan Chronicle reports that Telangana local medical aspirants are allegedly being deprived of the chance of opting for famous government medical colleges as during the round 2 counselling of KNRUHS the local students are retained in the local category and the vacancy in the unreserved category are getting filled by non-local students. As a result, many non-local students succeed in securing seats in government medical colleges like Osmania and Gandhi Medical College under the 'unreserved quota'.
The NTR University of Health Sciences (NTRUHS), AP, which also followed the same procedure as KNRUHS, cancelled seats granted during the Phase 2 counseling stating that it was faulty. Authorities informed that they have rectified the error and made fresh allotments in a different procedure. As per the admission procedure adopted by the NTR University of Health Sciences (NTRUHS), the student with Rank 6784 got admission in Andhra Medical College, Visakhapatnam, under the 85 per cent "local" quota in Phase 1 counselling.
During Phase 2 counselling, the status of the particular medico got changed and he is pushed upto the 15 per cent "unreserved" quota because of which vacancy is created for a local medical aspirant in the "local" quota.
As per admission procedure adopted by the Kaloji University of Health Sciences (KNRUHS), the student with Rank 1445 got admission in Gandhi Medical College, under the local quota in phase 1 of the counseling. In Phase 2 counselling, eight seats remained vacant under unreserved category. The status of the first eight students who got admission under the "local" quota remained unchanged, reports the daily. However, many of them had got better ranks than the students from AU and SVU regions, hence they should be pushed to the "unreserved" quota making a vacancy of eight seats under the 'local quota'. But, the vacancies in the "unreserved" quota were filled by the students from AU and SVU.
As per the report by Deccan Chronicle, Dr Ala Venkateswarlu of Guntur, who previously raised vioce against the faulty procedure in AP and got it changed stated, "Both universities cannot be right because the procedures they followed are completely opposite". "The only difference between the two procedures is that local students of Telangana state were deprived of seats because of the Kaloji University procedure," he added. Earlier, the AP government was compelled to implement the rule of reservation in sliding as per Supreme Court judgments after he filed a PIL over the issue of faulty admission procedure.
KNRUHS registrar Dr Praveen justified the decision stating that students from other states did not join and hence those vacancies would be filled by local students in the Phase 3 counselling. When asked what if the students join the colleges, he said that the admission committee members would be able to better explain the procedure followed by the university.
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