Medical council order on stray-vacancy admission: Around 140 students to lose seats

Reiterating instructions from its July notification, it stated, “All state counseling authorities were requested to make necessary arrangements for conducting the counseling through online mode for all rounds including the stray vacancy round in private medical colleges, from the academic sessions 2023-24. No college or institute shall conduct the counseling, including the stray vacancy round.”

After centralised admission rounds, remaining seats are termed as stray vacancy.

While the prevalent practice has been to fill these seats at the respective institutes, the NMC had instructed to include stray vacancy round in the centralised mode of online admissions to ensure transparency.

Contrary to NMC guidelines for online seat-filling in stray rounds of medical UG admissions, the Maharashtra CET Cell in September issued a schedule for stray vacancy round wherein aspirants were instructed to approach individual private medical colleges on their respective email addresses.

At that moment, concerns were raised by parents and candidates as the CET Cell’s instructions were contrary to the NMC guidelines.

One of the parents Brijesh Sutaria, who had raised objection in September, said, “Future of this students is put at risk now with the new NMC notification because of the blunder by the CET Cell. Additionally, meritorious students have been made scapegoat in this process who could have secured admission under the centralised online mode.”

Calling it to be just an eyewash, another parent, Sudha Shenoy, said, “Many of these students have already started classes. Even the courts will support these students. The Maharashtra CET Cell announced this stray round on September 26. Was NMC sleeping till now?”

Commissioner of Maharashtra CET Cell, Mahendra Warbhuwan said, “We will now seek guidance from the ministry of medical education on the new NMC notification.”