596 seats remain vacant after second round of medical counselling this year
The Hindu
Over 500 medical seats remain unfilled in Karnataka due to high fees, with mop-up round underway.
After the second round of seat allotment, a total of 596 medical seats are left vacant this year, due to various reasons including high fees. These include seats that were cancelled owing to allotted seats being rejected by students. In previous years, only between 100 to 150 seats would be left unfilled after the second round allotment.
Of the available seats, seven are under the government quota, 135 under private quota, 453 under management quota, and one under the Non-Resident Indian (NRI) quota.
This year, the government has fixed a fee of ₹65,100 for seats in government colleges. In Employees’ State Insurance Corporation (ESIC) colleges, this fee is ₹1,10,100. For government quota seats in private colleges, fees range from ₹1,54,321 to ₹6,09,834. The fee for private quota seats in private colleges ranges from ₹8,11,285 to ₹25,15,750. Fees range from ₹26,62,700 to ₹45,15,750 for management and NRI quota seats per annum.
Tarun Kumar from Bengaluru, a medical seat aspirant, said, “During the second round of seat allotment, I was expecting to get a government quota seat in some private college. But I got private quota seat. My family cannot afford it and so I surrendered the seat to KEA.”
Praveen Chandra, a government quota medical aspirant from Bengaluru, flagged the issue of facilities. “I wanted to get a seat in a government college with good facilities. However, the college where I got a seat lacked facilities for clinical practice. So, I cancelled the seats in the second round and decided to participate in the mop-up round.”
Now, Karnataka Examination Authority (KEA) is in the process of allocating these 596 seats in the mop-up round of UGNEET-2024. Candidates who are eligible and interested in securing these seats must pay a caution deposit for the medical course fee in advance. It is ₹1 lakh for general category students and ₹50,000 for SC/ST candidates.
To prevent seat blocking and other irregularities in the mop-up round, KEA has made caution deposit mandatory. “The option to pay will be available online or via a downloadable challan from October 5 to October 8. Candidates can then select their options between October 7 and October 14,” Prasanna H., Executive Director of KEA, said.