Admission in med and dental colleges to begin tomm

Mumbai, Aug 10 (UNI) Admission process to the medical and dental colleges in the state will start from tomorrow as the Bombay High Court today approved the scheme allowing the newly formed Admission Monitoring Committee to oversee admission process.

The Bombay High Court today approved the modified scheme according to which all the admissions shall be based on merits of scores secured by students in the Common Entrance Test (CET) conducted either by the Association of Management of Private Unaided Medical and Dental Colleges (AMPUMDC) or the state and the Pravesh Niyantran Samiti (Admission Monitoring Committee) -- constituted as per Supreme Court's directions and headed by retired High Court judge -- will oversee the admission process for colleges affiliated with the AMPUMDC.

A division bench comprising Justices D Y Chandrachud and R S Mohite gave its approval while hearing a review petition filed by AMPUMDC contending that they did not approve of the previous scheme formulated in May this year as their lawyer had not consulted them before approving the scheme then. Also it was in violation with the law laid down by the Supreme Court.

According to the scheme now all the admissions will be through a computerised, single window, centralised admission process' (CAP), to be conducted by AMPUMDC. But PNS will get all the data before every round, and can intervene if there is an incling of any malpractice at any stage.

The difference between the reworked scheme and earlier May 5 scheme is that Directorate of Medical Education and Research (DMER) was to oversee the admission process, now that task will be performed by PNS.

Acordingly, the admission process of colleges affiliated with AMUPMDC will start tomorrow and first list of selected candidates will be out on August 19. After this, second list for vacant seats, will be out on Septmber 4, and futher third and final list will come out on September 20.

After these three rounds, if any seats are vacant, colleges would fill them up on their own, but on merit only.

The main feature of this scheme is that before centralised admissions begin, merit list prepared by AMUPMDC on the basis of CET would be provided to PNS, alongwith data culled from admission forms and information as to intake capacity of each college. Then AMUPMDC will prepare list of candidates getting admission, but this will be a provisional list, it will have to be approved by PNS -- which will scrutinse it -- before publishing it.

This process will be repeated before every round of admission, so that PNS can ensure that no malpractices take place. Same pattern will be followed in future.

The judges today also directed the state government that all infrastructure, including software expertise, be provided to PNS as it has to scrutinise a huge data. Also, all the information regarding the admission -- relevant for students seeking admission -- be put on AMUPMDC website as well websites of DMER and PNS.

The original petition in this case was filed by PAMS last September. Its contention was that private medical colleges were giving merit a go-by in the admissions. To redress this problem, a scheme was worked out this May, which gave DMER a regulatory role, but AMUPMDC challenged it saying that as per supreme court judgements, only PNS had power to interfere in admissions to private colleges. So the said modifications were initiated and now to be implemented.

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