Maharashtra NEET Counselling: HC allows college-level MBBS admissions on private medical college’s plea

The Bombay High Court (HC) on Tuesday decided to extend its last year’s interim order directing the Maharashtra authorities to have an institute-level counselling round to fill vacant state-quota MBBS and BDS seats in private medical colleges to the current year admission process. In Maharashtra, centralised NEET counselling is managed by the Common Entrance Test Cell or Maha CET Cell.

The institute-level counselling allows individual private colleges to admit candidates to unfilled seats on their own, as opposed to the centralised counselling, where the seats across the institutes are allotted by a central authority.

Also read Maharashtra CET Cell allows MBBS aspirant to participate in NEET stray round counselling 2025

The interim order by the division bench of justices Ravindra Ghuge and Ashwin Bhobe has once again paved the way for the state to hand over the undergraduate medical and dental admissions to private institutes at the fag end of NEET UG counselling 2025 process. However, it remains to be seen whether the state will immediately change the mode of counselling or let the Maharashtra CET Cell complete the ongoing first stray vacancy round in the centralised manner, as has been planned.

As many as 451 out of 3,599 seats at private medical colleges are still up for grabs, while only 37 out of 4,936 state quota government seats are left.

Much like last year, the HC’s verdict comes in response to a plea by Vedantaa Institute of Medical Science (VIMS), Palghar, the state's only medical college run by a corporate firm.

NEET Counselling 2025 and VIMS Palghar

VIMS Palghar has 150 seats of which 96 are yet to be filled. The medical college challenged the National Medical Commission’s (NMC) July 2023 directive stipulating that the entire admission process following the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET UG) must be carried out through online counselling only, and prohibiting college level admissions.

The petitioner contends that the state’s 2016 rules, which provide for colleges to fill the seats left unclaimed after the centralised admission process (CAP) rounds, supersede the medical education regulator’s instructions.

However, the court will continue to hear VIMS Palghar’s petition and has asked NMC to submit its reply by December 20. The final hearing for the matter is scheduled for January 8, when the admission process will likely be over. “The previous plea hasn’t been resolved yet. The issue needs to be taken to its logical conclusion,” said Ganesh Gole, NMC’s lawyer.

HC, however, didn't make any pronouncement on VIMS’ plea to let candidates from outside Maharashtra to also apply and be admitted on the state quota seats. “We didn’t push for this prayer during Tuesday’s hearing,” said Madhav Thorat, a counsel for the college.

Another plea by VIMS against the state limiting the benefits of non-resident Indian (NRI) quota seats to only actual NRIs and their children is slated to be heard on Friday.

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College-level MBBS admission controversy

Since the last couple of years, the issue of college-level admissions has become a source of friction among institutes, candidates and authorities. While private medical colleges advocate having control over counselling in order to ensure that all their seats are occupied, the students have repeatedly opposed them. They believe that this results in an opaque admission process, where colleges deny enrolment to deserving candidates in favour of the highest bidders for unclaimed seats. The activists have also alleged that it also encourages the institutes to block their seats through ‘fake’ applicants.

Even though NMC's Post-Graduation Medical Education Board (PGMEB) in 2023 asked the states to carry out medical counselling only through an online system, Maharashtra gave in to a plea from colleges and changed the final stray vacancy round into an institutional round. However, the commissions invalidated the enrollment of all 141 candidates who got seats at this stage.

Also read MCC NEET UG 2025 Stray Vacancy: 1,232 MBBS AIQ seats vacant; choice filling extended till today

In the aftermath of this fiasco, the HC came out with two opposing judgements. The Nagpur bench of the Bombay HC, hearing a plea by two affected candidates, agreed with NMC in its November 2023 verdict. However, when VIMS moved the principal bench of the court in 2024, it accepted the college's argument that the commission's directive is merely in the form of an 'executive instruction' and directed the state to act according to its rules.