SC stays surrender of PG medical seats

Chances of meritorious students getting a fresh crack at reputed government medical colleges brightened on Thursday with the Supreme Court staying the surrender of all-India quota PG medical seats to the states.

Petitioners pointed out that several states, who contribute to the All-India Quota PG seats’ pool, filled through an open entrance examination, deliberately delayed intimating the number of vacancies in government medical colleges to the Directorate General of Health Service and for years have been cornering them for those who had cleared the state test.

A vacation Bench comprising Justices Markandey Katju and Deepak Verma stayed the surrender of the all-India quota PG seats to the state governments till May 26. The surrender was to take place on Friday, as per the schedule, since DGHS has already conducted the second counselling. It is now likely that DGHS would have to conduct an extended second counselling to fill as many all-India quota PG seats.

There were over 3,000 PG seats under the 50% all-India quota open to competition sans reservation till the 2006-07 academic session. However, the apex court had last year introduced SC/ST quota in it. With this, the number of seats for general category, including OBCs, will stand reduced to around 2,300 and nearly 700 seats will go to SCs and STs.

On a 1985 order of the court, 25% post-graduation seats in medical colleges were culled out for the open all-India competition from the academic year 1987-88 solely on the basis of merit and sans any reservation for socially weaker sections. PG seats under the all-India quota was increased from 25% to 50% by the apex court in 2003.
Source:- The Times of India 22 May 2009 P. 13 Delhi

For any query:- legalbuddy@gmail.com