Srinagar: J&K Students Association on Friday urged Lieutenant Governor Manoj Sinha to delay the pooling of PG seats from J&K UT in All India Quota (AIQ) until PG seats are allotted to new Medical Colleges here.
The demand came in backdrop of the proposed idea of pooling 50 percent PG seats in AlQ.
According to J&K Students Association (JKSA), it has been recommended that JKUT would participate in the AlQ for PG seats pooling a proposed 50 percent of its total seat capacity from 2022 onwards.
In a statement here, JKSA said, “The UT currently has a very small pool of PG seats comprising just a few hundred seats which is unlike those UTs/States of India which participate in AlQ and have thousands of medical PG seats.”
Under the guidelines for implementation of AIQ, wherein 50 percent seats from GMCs and 100 percent seats from SKIMS would be filled through the same, JKSA pointed out that only 172 seats would be reserved for the domicile aspirants of J&K, which means a “loss of 350 seats out of the total 522 seats available at present.”
It said this means that “70 percent of seats would be written off, with a meagre 30 percent seats remaining earmarked for the destitute UT”.
“Undergraduate MBBS courses have been started at five newly constructed Government Medical Colleges — GMC Anantnag, GMC Baramulla, GMC Rajouri, GMC Doda and GMC Kathua — but no PG seats have been allotted to these colleges yet. The increasing number of MBBS graduates from the UT, which has roughly grown by three times in recent years, necessitates the availability of more PG seats to be made available to the UT exclusively for proportionate accommodation,” the JKSA statement said while adding that the allotment of PG seats to these medical colleges is expected to be expedited.
“Pooling PG seats in All India Quota at this juncture would drastically reduce the number of UT seats, which is already meagre. Unlike other states of India, there are no bondage rules in existence for medical postgraduate programme in the Union territory of J&K. As a result, PG scholars from other states would not contribute to the overall number of specialists in J&K. As against this, doctors belonging to J&K and pursuing PG programmes in different state colleges of India would have to be substantiated by subscribing to a working bond of 4-6 years. This would consequently reduce the doctor-patient ratio in the region (here in J&K) drastically which is already very grim,” the statement asserted.
It said JKSA earnestly requests the Lieutenant Governor Manoj Sinha to consider the demand of delaying the pooling of PG seats from UT of J&K in AIQ until PG seats are allotted to new medical colleges so that J&K could participate in All India Quota without affecting the overall seat balance.
