MCI’s Single Entrance Exam could face opposition from private institutions in Maharashtra

It is becoming increasingly clear that private unaided institutions in Maharashtra will put up some stiff opposition to the Medical Council of India’s recent decision to introduce a system of one single examination to qualify candidates for entrance to all medical colleges in India.

This kind of an entrance examination will be in place from 2011 onwards.

The MCI’s decision has been accepted by the Union Health Ministry. Currently, students who wish to pursue a course in medicine need to appear for approximately five or six entrance examinations for different colleges that they are interested in attending. To compound matters there are usually issues like exam dates at different colleges clashing or coming in too close together for candidates who wish to appear for both, to be able to do so. Students also are highly inconvenienced due to the travel that is required to distant locations for counseling and allotment of seats.

The new MCI decision means that all of these hassles will be done away with. One entrance test for the MBBS course and one for the MD course will be held for all the 271 medical colleges in the country. Of these 138 colleges are run by the government and 133 are functioning under private management. Altogether a total of 31,000 seats are offered for the MBBS course, and for the post graduate course, there are a total of 11,000 seats.

The Maharashtra state government has been favourable to the MCI decision. The managements of the private colleges, however, say that the MCI decision is against the spirit of a Supreme Court judgment – that was ruled in the TMA Pai case. This ruling had recognised and safeguarded the freedom of private and unaided institutions on several issues, which include the right to admission. They say that educational institutions must be allowed to take their own decisions without any form of government control. The private colleges have a separate common entrance test that determines the right to admission in 11 medical and 21 dental colleges in Maharashtra.

The guidelines for the single entrance exam are yet to be finalised and it remains to be seen how much of the decision will go through following this much opposition from private establishments.

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