Creating a history of sorts, the Supreme Court on Friday gave the green signal to the Union health ministry’s proposal to have admission to the Central quota seats for PG courses in medical colleges across the country through e-counselling benefiting over 5,000 medicos passing the admission test for pursuing higher studies.
The three rounds of counselling would start from May 1 due to introducing of the e-counselling. But the fixed schedule of starting the counselling from March 1 would be maintained form 2013 onwards, director-general of health services in its report said.
As per the schedule drawn by the DGHS, the candidates would need not to go to the counselling centres in Delhi, Kolkata, Chennai and Mumbai but give their preferences of colleges and subjects on-line and would get the allotments accordingly.
After senior advocate Ashok Bhan placed the proposal of the DGHS before a bench of Justices Deepak Verma and K.S. Radhakrishnan explaining the technical details how the system would function, the court gave its approval to the “innovated” idea.
The e-counselling would also extend to the admission for MBBS and BDS courses later when the process starts form June onwards, advocate Bhan told the apex court.
As per the scheme, the medicos who have passed the admission test for 50 per cent All India quota seats for PG courses, would be required to give their preferences of the course and the colleges in different states on-line sitting at home and would also know the status of available seats on-line as the admission process progresses. This will enable students to readjust their preferences as candidates can give three choices.
The DGHS has made the arrangement with Nati-onal Informatics Centre to provide the technical support. “By using computer information in the online allotment process, a lot of inconvenience, financial burden and physical strains of the candidates will be reduced significantly,” DGHS report said.