MP NEET PG 2024: HC stays counselling for NRI quota seats; 'reservation violation' explained

NEW DELHI: Yet another petition has been filed against the MP NEET PG 2024 counselling process in the Madhya Pradesh High Court for alleged violation of reservation policy in private medical colleges sand application of 15% NRI quota to only 8 branches instead of the total 22. The court has stayed filling up of NRIs seats in the state NEET PG counselling once again.

Dr Ojus Yadav, a resident of Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh, did his education up to higher secondary in the state and MBBS from SSR Medical College Mauritius. He qualified the NEET PG 2024 with all India rank of 18345 and state rank of 639. However, due to the violation of reservation policy, in some cases 50% of the seats in a particular branch of a private college have gone for NRI quota resulting in shortage of seats for unreserved, EWS, OBC, SC, and ST candidates.

The MP NEET PG counselling 2024 for private college is done in compliance with the Madhya Pradesh Chikitsa Shiksha Pravesh Rules, 2018. The petitioner alleged that the state government and counselling committee have "manipulated" this rule in spite of lack of any regulation for bifurcation of seats into clinical and non-clinical.

The petitioner urged the court to direct the state government to immediately refrain from proceeding with the counselling and to place fresh seat matrix.

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Reservation violation in MP NEET PG counselling

The MP NEET PG counselling 2024 seat matrix and the state merit list was published on the official portal on November 18. The counselling committee allowed candidates to raise objections against vacancies by November 19, within a span of two days. Notably, the committee had published the vacancies available in the Madhya Pradesh government medical colleges and “deliberately left out the vacancies which were available in the private medical colleges”.

On November 20, the round 1 choice filling date was revised and no new date was announced. Immediately after this, on November 22, the seat matrix for private medical colleges were published at dme.mponline.gov.in, selectively for 8 branches.

The selective application of 15% NRI quota seats has led to reducing the number of seats available for these branches for other category students. Notably, the facility to raise objections against the private college seat matrix was not made available “to prevent the illegal act coming to fore”.

MP NEET PG 2024: NRI seat matrix

The 15% NRI reservation was only applied to the following 8 branches.

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Impact of reservation violation

A total of 1,007 seats are available in MP private medical colleges, of which 152 seats in 22 branches are permissible under the 15% NRI quota, according to the rule. However, with the alleged manipulation of the reservation criteria, 152 seats have been reserved for just 8 branches, which led to an increase of the seats by 26%. There are 0% seats reserved for the remaining 14 branches.

"MP government reserved all of 15% NRI quota seats, amounting to 152 out of 1,007 total spots available for MD/MS admissions, from within only eight medical branches. The rules require the NRI reserved seats to be drawn from across 22 streams. Even last year, the NRI seats were earmarked in only nine branches. This disparity has resulted in many general and even reserved category students being deprived of their seat of choice at certain colleges," said Alok Vagrecha, a counsel for the petitioners.