1,000 seats in medical UG courses were not allotted

Mumbai: On Friday morning, the state Common Entrance Test (CET) cell released its round one selection list for the undergraduate (UG) medical course. However, it was discovered that almost 1,000 medical seats were missing, causing confusion and chaos among aspiring students.

These seats were added to the seat matrix released by the state’s CET cell last week, and therefore, students opted for them while filling out their choices. The seat matrix provides information about vacant seats in respective colleges.

Students have now asked the CET cell to scrap the allotment list and declare the round invalid.

The cell clarified that these seats, which belong to six private and one government medical college and one private dental college, were excluded from the allotment due to a lack of approval from the Maharashtra University of Health Sciences (MUHS).

Brijesh Sutaria, a parent of a student, said, “The same thing happened last year too. Candidates are questioning why these seats were initially included in the seat matrix, leading them to choose these options in their preference forms. As a consequence, cut-offs in other colleges increased, affecting students’ chances of admission.”

While saying this, Sutaria also added that the CET cell’s latest circular does not say whether these seats will be included in round 2 or not.

Disgruntled students and parents are now expressing their frustration, noting that this has been a recurring issue for the past three years.

This year, 10,145 government and private seats were available for admission in the state for MBBS and 3,444 seats were available for Bachelor of Dental Surgery (BDS).

Parent representative Sudha Shenoy said students fill out their choices based on the seat matrix. “If these seats were not approved, why were they included in the seat matrix? It will not be fair for students who are eligible for these seats. I wrote to chief minister Eknath Shinde, deputy chief minister Devendra Fadnavis, and the medical education minister Hasan Mushrif and asked them to make MUHS answerable for this.

A student said some of these seats are in top colleges. “This is very unfair; the government should redo this round and deliver justice to us. Some of the colleges give admission to the students in the all-India quota, but they are not allowed to give admission in the state quota.”

On Friday evening, the CET cell published a notification stating, “There are few colleges for which some of the necessary permissions are awaited, and hence they are not included in the first round of allotment (MBBS/BDS) course. These seats will be considered during the subsequent round of allotment once all the necessary permissions are received.”