The Christian Medical College (CMC) has decided to stop admissions in its MBBS and super specialities courses for 2017-2018 as it is not able to follow the set admission process after NEET was implemented, reported Ramya Kannan in The Hindu.
However, it will only admit one student this year who is a central government nominee and the son of a martyr, and another student in super specialties due to prior commitments. In total, 99 seats in MBBS and 61 in the super specialties will not be filled this year.
The decision comes in the wake of the government stipulating that all admissions to medical courses be made through single window counselling based on the NEET marks.
However, the college had already finished its counselling process by the time the government asked it to carry out single window counselling.
Krishna Srinivasan, senior lawyer who appeared in the court on behalf of the college told The Hindu, “The Council was perturbed by the position taken by the MCI and the Government of India to whittle down or obliterate the benefit of Article 30 (1) to a proven institution.”
He added that they have filed a petition in the Supreme Court for assigning common counselling for both UG and PG courses. They have also added two interlocutory petitions for undergraduate admissions and another one for super specialties.
He said that by October the court will give its order on whether they are allowed to conduct their own admissions.
Out of the 100 seats available for the MBBS course, 85 seats are usually reserved for the minority community i.e. Christians and 15 seats are in the open category.
Students who are admitted under the minority category are asked to serve in one of the mission hospitals run by the society for two years after completing the course, reported The Hindu.