0 percentile enough for specialty med seats

With Few Takers For Course, Govt Lowers Bar As One-Time Measure

- Hemali Chhapia

Mumbai: With hundreds of medical super specialty course seats vacant, the authorities have removed the qualifying mark criterion for aspirants. So, rock-bottom scores or a zero percentile would be acceptable for a course at this level.

“Seats have been going vacant every year. The government felt that as a one-time measure, in the larger context of things, we can even accept students with a zero percentile. This will not have any precedence. It is being taken up as a test case. After all, the entrance test was not conducted to eliminate students, but merely to grade them,” said a senior officer from the health ministry.

With 748 super speciality seats unfilled after four rounds of admission this year, the Medical Counselling Committee took the drastic step. As a one-time measure, any candidate who had taken the NEET super speciality 2021 exam can participate in the special mop-up admission round irrespective of his/her scores.