Maharashtra NEET Counselling: Pvt medical colleges move HC, want institute rounds of MBBS, MD admissions back

Two private medical colleges in Maharashtra have moved the Bombay High Court (HC) against the state government’s decision to end institute-level counselling in medical admissions.

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 Common Entrance Test (CET) cell.

The Vedantaa Institute of Medical Sciences (VIMS) Palghar and Parbhani Medical College (PMC), Parbhani, who filed pleas before the court’s principal bench in Mumbai and the Aurangabad bench, respectively, will argue that they have a right to fill the seats left vacant after centralised counselling. The outcome of the case will likely impact the ongoing National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test Undergraduate as well as Postgraduate (NEET UG and NEET PG) admission in the state.

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The institute-level counselling, carried out to fill all MBBS and MD/MS spots still unclaimed after the regular rounds of NEET UG counselling or NEET PG 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. The colleges, on the other hand, have advocated for retaining this method to ensure that none of their seats are unfilled.

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.

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The private colleges, however, see these rules as the state encroaching on their rights. They claim that there's no bar on institutional counselling under the Maharashtra Unaided Private Professional Educational Institutions (Regulation of Admissions and Fees) Act, 2015, the parent law of the new rules. They also plan to invoke the landmark Supreme Court (SC) judgements in the TMA Pai Foundation v State of Karnataka, Islamic Academy of Education v State of Karnataka and PA Inamdar v State of Maharashtra cases to seek more autonomy in admissions.

“These judgements give unaided colleges the right to admit their own students and fill all their vacancies. If SC has recognised this right, merely taking away [the institutional round provision] won't fill the vacancies. If the vacancies persist after regular rounds, the institutional round needs to be there,” said MV Thorat, a counsel for both the petitioning colleges.

VIMS Palghar, the state’s first medical ollege to be run by a section 8 (no-profit) company instead of a charitable organisation, has been at the forefront in the legal battle for preserving institutional admissions. One of the costliest medical colleges in Maharashtra, it usually accounts for the lion's share of vacancies post-regular rounds.

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The controversy around institute-level admissions had first cropped up in 2023, when the state government, at the fag end of MBBS admissions, accepted the private colleges' demand to allow them to fill their vacant seats. However, NMC, later, asked the colleges to cancel the admission. of 141 students admitted through this method, pointing out at the SC and its own directives against institutional admissions.

In the next two admission cycles, in 2024 and 2025, VIMS Palghar managed to get favourable rulings from Bombay HC to persist with the college-level counselling.