YSR health varsity to take up fresh counselling for PG admissions

 Vijayawada: Dr YSR University of Health Sciences would start fresh PG counselling in the first phase for admissions to 28 government and private medical colleges from Friday night. The process is to fill up nearly 3,000 seats for the academic year 2023-24.

The university that started the first phase of PG counseling cancelled it on Thursday following an alert from the National Medical Commission, which stated that a few colleges got fake/forged letter of permission on behalf of member or president of the medical assessment and rating board, thereby enhancing the number of seats for admission from the actually permitted strength.

The NMC even lodged a complaint with Delhi Police on the fraud and an investigation was started immediately.

The university is checking the letters of permission issued by the NMC for sanction of additional seats in the medical colleges for PG admission to find out whether there was any fraudulent act. Only three private medical colleges were identified, which allegedly got fake letters of permission for enhancing the number of seats beyond the permitted strength.

For instance, the GSL medical college near Rajamahendravaram got the sanction for 40 seats in general medicine, a sharp rise from the existing 14. This meant they got permission for 26 additional seats. So was the case with two other private medical colleges.

Managements of some private medical colleges are worried over the NMC claim. They wonder how they could identify such fake letters of permission from the NMC. They say  NMC must come up with a foolproof mechanism to avoid such a lapse in future.

They said that, as per procedure, the NMC inspected their colleges. After getting satisfied with the availability of infrastructure, faculty and fulfillment of other norms, the NMC issued a letter of permission for enhancing the number of seats. Based on this, the health university also inspected the colleges and granted permission for admissions for the newly sanctioned seats. How would irregularities crop up in such a well-established system, they ask.

Vice chancellor of Dr YSR university of health sciences, K Babji, said, “We are streamlining the entire process and will take up PG counselling very shortly to avoid any anomalies.”

Meanwhile, the university says that as they abolished the earlier counselling, they will be coming up with a new seat matrix based on the hike in the seat strengths by the NMC and will take up fresh counselling.

Registrar of YSR university of health sciences, Radhika Reddy, said, “We have rectified all anomalies and have come up with the total number of seats available in medical colleges, which got permission from NMC, and will take up fresh counselling from Friday night. Whatever be the web options exercised by the students in the previous counselling remain cancelled.”

Notably, the university had earlier issued notification for PG admissions for 2023-24 in ‘competent authority’ quota and ‘management quota’ under phase-1.