Maharashtra NEET UG Counselling: HC refuses to let medical college hold own MBBS rounds, says plea ‘premature’

The Bombay High Court (HC) on Thursday refused a plea by a private medical college to have institution-level counselling to fill up vacant MBBS seats during the ongoing NEET UG 2026 counselling in the state. The court, however, accepted the college’s legal position that manual counselling can be held after centralised admissions, and directed it to approach the Supreme Court (SC), in case there are unfilled seats at the end of the admission process.

The institute-level counselling allows colleges to fill their seats by themselves, as opposed to the centralised admission process (CAP) carried out by the state Admission Regulating Authority (ARA) and the Common Entrance Test Cell (Maharashtra CET Cell).

The plea by the Parbhani Medical College (PMC) is among a handful of petitions filed by self-financed medical colleges in the state against the government’s decision to do away with the institutional round of admission from this academic year. The state’s decision came after multiple complaints of admission denial and excessive fee demands by colleges during the manual counselling in the last few years.

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Maharashtra NEET UG Counselling: MBBS beyond Cet Cell

The petitioning institute, Parbhani Medical College (PMC), expressed an apprehension that, with the cancellation of institute-level counselling, it may end up with vacant seats. The college had 20 out of 150 of its UG seats unclaimed after the conclusion of three regular rounds, but seven of them were filled in the first stray vacancy round.

Contending that the prohibition on the manual counselling is unreasonable and violative of the constitutional right to practice any profession, the college said that it’s entitled to admit students after the regular centralised admission process (CAP) and stray vacancy rounds conducted by the Maha CET Cell.

The college, however, also said that it’s not insisting on an institutional round, but only wants to ensure that all its spots are occupied, so that it doesn’t incur financial loss.

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Opposing the plea, ARA pointed out the practical difficulties in creating separate waitlists for individual colleges. It also explained that doing so would be unjust to higher merited candidates as they may be selected at multiple institutes and may not be able to physically reach their desired college in time.

The admission regulator also told the court about the complaints related to the colleges not allowing selected candidates to join, adding that it’s not possible to monitor colleges in the institute-level round.

The court, while acknowledging the legal precedent of allowing colleges to admit students on their own in two cases – Index Medical College, Hospital and Research Center versus State of Madhya Pradesh and Dar-Us-Salam Educational Trust versus Medical Council of India – held that the plea is ‘premature’ as the admission process is yet to be over and the college may well be able to have all its seats filled. It, however, added that the college can move SC to request extending the admission’s cut-off date and permission to fill up vacant seats.

The state has already conducted one stray vacancy round and plans to hold two more till the end of the month. As many as 145 out of 3,299 MBBS seats in private medical colleges, and 100 out of 450 seats in two state private universities are still up for grabs. One college, and one of the other petitioners in HC, Vedantaa Institute of Medical Sciences (VIMS) Palghar accounts for 67 of the vacant seats.

MV Thorat, a counsel for PMC, said that they are now planning to challenge the HC order in the apex court.

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NEET UG Counselling 2026: College rounds for MBBS

The institute-level counselling has become a bone of contention between medical aspirants, colleges and the state government in the last few years. While students and activists have claimed that the institutional admission rounds, with little transparency and oversight from the government, have allowed colleges to bypass the merit list and offer the seats to their favoured candidates, usually in exchange of large sums of money. 

At least during the last three admission cycles, the state, following the directives from the National Medical Commission (NMC), would initially announce its intention to carry out the entire admission process centrally. But it would eventually be forced to change the mode of the final stray vacancy round of UG admissions to the institutional round, either under pressure from the colleges or due to court orders.

However, this year, the state government sought to put a more legally tenable curb on institutional counselling by notifying fresh rules for both UG and PG medical and dental admissions in July and earlier this month, respectively. These rules stipulate that the entire admission process, including stray vacancy rounds, be done online through CAP by the competent authority. 

The rules also barred the candidates that fail to confirm admission to the seats allotted in the regular counselling round from applying for admission for two subsequent years. This was done to prevent aspirants from blocking seats they had no intention of accepting, resulting in large vacancies.