Vijayawada: The announcement of the AP merit list for NEET UG for admission into first year medical and dental courses in government and private medical colleges may be delayed as the Union ministry of health is yet to communicate the official result to the NTR University of Health Sciences (NTRUHS) so far.
The National Testing Agency (NTA) announced the NEET UG results on October 16. The NTA communicates the official result to the Union ministry of health which forwards it to nodal agencies to enable them to prepare the state merit lists with 85 per cent of total seats available for state ranks and the remaining 15 per cent of seats to be filled up with those based on all India ranks.
NTRUHS authorities maintain that they used to get official communication on such results within a week but this year they have not received any communication so far. It is suspected that as the pandemic has been affecting the functioning of both government and private offices, official communication of NEET UG results to the States/UTs might be delayed.
University registrar Dr K. Sankar said, “We are awaiting receipt of official communication from the union ministry of health on NEET UG results. Once we get them, we will prepare the state list and announce it in a week’s time. We also do not know when we will get the NEET UG results.”
Meanwhile, NTRUHS authorities are preparing the seat matrix to provide reservation for various categories including BC, SC, ST, women, NCC, sports and children of armed personnel for admission to qualified candidates in both medical and dental colleges in the state.
University authorities maintain that AP has 28 medical colleges, including 12 under the control of government, while the rest are being run by the private managements. The total number of seats available for admission is about 5,010. Similarly, there are 16 dental colleges with two under government control and the total number of seats available is about 1,440.
Candidates who performed well in the NEET UG are eagerly waiting for the announcement of state merit list and commencement of counselling for admission.
The state government is yet to come up with the two orders on conduct of counselling process for admission and also on fixation of fee.
