74 petitions in High Court hold up UG medical, dental admissions in Mumbai

Source: hindustantimes.com

The Bombay high court (HC) has received 74 petitions from students from the scheduled tribe (ST) communities alleging that their constitutional right has been deprived because they were denied documents that entitled them to quota seats. Admissions to undergraduate medical and dental courses have been on hold for more than three weeks now because of the petitions.

“These students whose applications for caste certificates were denied by the respective departments for various reasons had also approached the high court earlier, where their petition was rejected. They then approached the Supreme Court (SC), which has directed the HC to look into the matter,” said a senior official from the state common entrance test (CET) cell.

The SC on August 13 acted upon a petition filed by ST students who alleged that they were deprived of quota seats as they could not produce caste certificates in time. The SC in its order requested a special bench at the Bombay HC to solve the issue at the earliest and extended the admissions deadline as well. Instead of the original deadline of August 18, the state can now finish filling up all remaining seats in medical and dental institutes by September 8.

Students usually get three days to complete their admission formalities after the announcement of an allotment list, but this year the process has taken more than two weeks due to confusion over newly-included seats in dental courses as well as floods in Maharashtra. However, on August 13, the SC called for a stay on UG medical and dental admissions until there is further clarity on petitions filed by students from the ST communities.

While the matter is yet to be heard at the HC, the state CET cell is hoping to get the stay on admission lifted. “The court has time till the end of the month to clear this matter whereas we only get one week after that to complete admission. Since the mop-up round as well as the institutional round is yet to take place, this process will take around three weeks. So we will request the court to give us more time,” said Anand Rayate, commissioner, CET cell.

Timeline—

*July 29, 2019—the second seat allotment list was scheduled to be released at 5pm, but was postponed until July 30, 12pm.

*July 30—By noon, state CET cell said the updated seat matrix after including 250 surrendered seats from the All India Quota (AIQ) and a new seat allotment list which also included newly approved seats in the dental course will be released by 6pm. The list was eventually released around 12 midnight

*July 31—Hours after the second seat allotment list was released, the CET cell released a circular stating that pending clearance from the state medical education department on new increased seats in the economically weaker section (EWS) category, a stay was implemented on the second round of admissions.

*August 7—Incessant rains threw the transport system out of gear and following requests from students, CET cell delayed the deadline for students to complete the admissions process.

*August 10—In another circular, CET cell released a circular, informing students to confirm their admissions by 5pm on Monday and submit their fees and the necessary documents at the nearest government medical college. The medical college will then process the fees and the documents to the private institute allotted to the student.

*August 12—Was the deadline for students approach government medical colleges to complete their admissions process and a new schedule for the remaining admission rounds was to be released on August 13, which had to be stalled once again

August 13–Supreme Court called for a stay on UG medical and dental admissions until the Bombay high court clears a petition filed by students from the schedule tribe (ST) communities.

August 16–State CET cell approaches Bombay HC in order intervene in the petition