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The Hindu
The Hindu
National
Special Correspondent

Medical seat surrender: Minister promises action

Education Minister K. Sudhakar has said that the State Government will take strict measures to avoid private medical colleges benefiting from the surrender of medical seats after three rounds of counselling.

Answering a question from BJP member N. Ravikumar in the Legislative Council, the Minister said exploiting a loophole in law, a few private medical colleges were benefiting from surrender of medical seats. In 2019-20 and 2020-21, a total of 1,227 seats were surrendered. “We will introduce heavy penalty in case of surrender of seats so that the problem does not continue in the coming years,” Mr. Sudhakar said.

Earlier, Mr. Ravikumar said over 1.19 lakh students took the entrance examination for medical seats in the State. Of them, 89,539 were eligible to get seats. As many as 33,650 attended the interview. And, finally only 8,535 students got the seats. “When such is the competition to get medical seats, how come people surrender seats? It is a mafia involving some colleges and students. The colleges inform about the surrender of the seats only at the last hour of the counselling, so that nobody can take them. The government should conduct another round of counselling to fill all the seats,” he said.

The Minister responded that as per the Supreme Court’s ruling, only three rounds of counselling could be conducted.

Vacancies in govt. hospitals

Responding to a question on vacancies in government hospitals, raised by Mahantesh Kavatagimath of the BJP, Mr. Sudhakar said the government had revised the policy in recruitment of doctors. As many as 885 general duty doctors had been appointed. The second list of another 150 doctors would be released soon. Similarly, 692 specialists had been appointed. Among them, 343 had reported to duty. The second list of specialists would also be released soon, he said.

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