Relocation Of DNB Doctors Leads To ‘Back-Door Entry'

Low-Ranked Candidates End Up In Premier Institutions

- Rema.Nagarajan @timesgroup.com

How does a candidate forDNB (a postgraduate medical degree) ranked around 34,600 in the entrance exam get allotted a high-demand specialty like radio diagnosis in a highly regarded institution? How does one ranked around 15,000 get into an institution which usually gets filled around rank 5,000? It is through an opaque process where candidates allotted to institutions that lose accreditation are ‘relocated’ to those where seats are still vacant. Candidates have accused the National Board of Examination (NBE) of facilitating such ‘back-door entry’ for select candidates.

Every year, the NBE, which regulates postgraduate courses in various medical specialties, mostly in private hospitals, allots candidates to hospitals according to their preference and ranking in the entrance exam. However, the board often withdraws accreditation of entire hospitals or of seats in a few specialties after allotment, leaving hundreds of students in the lurch. In most such cases, complaints about the hospitals that lose accreditation would have been made months or even years back, but NBE not only includes the seats in these hospitals in the counselling process, it even allots students to them only to later cancel accreditation.