Maharashtra NEET Counselling: Private medical college sues for institute-level admissions, NRI quota expansion

A private medical college in Maharashtra has moved the Bombay High Court (HC) to have an institute-level round of admissions, where colleges fill vacant MBBS seats on their own instead of centralised NEET counselling for the state-quota seats. In another plea, the college has challenged the state's decision to limit the non-resident Indian (NRI) quota benefits to only the actual NRIs and their children.

The petitions have been filed by the Vedantaa Institute of Medical Sciences (VIMS), Palghar, the state's only medical college run by a corporate firm, which had successfully litigated for the college-level admissions in Maharashtra last year. This was despite the National Medical Commission's (NMC) insistence on the entire admission process be carried out in an online centralised mode. In Maharashtra, counselling for MBBS admission after the National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test (NEET UG) is conducted by the Maha CET Cell.

As in its previous plea, VIMS contends that the NMC's prohibition on college-level admissions can't supersede the state's 2016 medical admission rules, which do provide for vacant seats to be filled by colleges.

As many as 350 out of 3,499 private MBBS seats at 42 colleges are unfilled after the third round of admissions concluded earlier this week.

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The college-level admissions have become a contentious issue in the state for the past two years. While private medical institutes have been pushing to retain them to ensure all their seats are filled, activists and aspirants complain that this results in an opaque admission process, where colleges deny enrolment to deserving candidates in favour of the highest bidders for unclaimed seats.

In 2023, despite a directive from NMC's Post-Graduation Medical Education Board (PGMEB) to conduct medical admissions only through an online system, the state, following a request from colleges, at the eleventh hour decided to hand over the admissions to the institutes. This invited a rebuke from the regulator, which directed the state to cancel the admissions of all 141 candidates enrolled in the institute-level round.

While the state admission regulating authority (ARA), too, later invalidated 140 of these admissions -- one of the students got relief from the apex court -- their status remains unclear as they continue to be enrolled at their respective institutes. NMC, after including the names of these students in its list of admitted MBBS students, said that the final decision about the fate of these candidates will be made after a verification process.

When two of the candidates had moved the Nagpur bench of the Bombay HC against the cancellation of their enrollment, the court, in a November 2023 verdict, had upheld the NMC's stance. However, when VIMS approached the principal bench of the court the next year, it agreed with the college's argument that the commission's directive is merely in the form of an 'executive instruction' and that the state's rules allowing college-level admissions will prevail. The court's interim order resulted in the institute-level admissions being reintroduced.

MBBS Admission 2025: NRI quota challenge

The college has also challenged the state's decision to limit the eligibility of NRI quota to only those with NRI certificates and their children, excluding other kin of NRIs from this provision.

This change, brought through an amendment to the Maharashtra Unaided Private Professional Educational Institutions (Regulation of Admissions and Fees) Act, 2015, followed a similar decision by the Medical Counselling Committee (MCC) under the union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare (MoHFW) .

While MCC soon reversed its decision to extend the reservation to other relations through a preferential system -- first priority for immediate kin, second for the distant ones -- Maharashtra stuck to the revised system.

"This situation has led to a disparity and discrimination, where sponsored NRI candidates [the students sponsored by their NRI relatives] can be admitted to deemed universities in the state [through central counselling], but they aren't eligible for private colleges. Except for Maharashtra, all the other states have followed MCC's guidelines," said a counsel for VIMS.

NRI candidates are a lucrative business for private colleges, as the state allows them to charge five times the regular fees for these students. SC has criticised the NRI quota in educational institutes, terming it a 'fraud' .