Low-rankers get admission in top medical colleges in Bihar NEET 2019 counselling

After the first 2 rounds of NEET counselling, Bihar barred the already-admitted students from taking part in the mop-round. Read to know more.

In what can be called as a major loophole in the Bihar NEET 2019 counselling, the state has allotted top medical college seats to the low-rankers, while the students who had secured a seat in the first two rounds of counselling conducted by the body, weren't allowed to take part in the mop-up round of counselling.

After the first Bihar NEET mop-round round of counselling was conducted, it was noticed that the students who had gotten low ranks were allotted top colleges, while the students who had already secure a seat during the 1^st and the 2^nd round of counselling weren’t given a choice to upgrade their colleges, considering the state's rule which bars already-admitted students from taking part in the mop-round of counselling.

Bihar has a total of 972 UG medical seats. The counselling for Bihar NEET 2019 had two rounds. 20 % of the total seats that is 183 seats were left vacant, in which 131 were for the unreserved candidates. All the students had to comply to the state’s rule that said that no one can appear for the mop-up round of counselling if they have been allotted with a seat in either of the two previous counselling sessions, which suggests that at least 100 students had to be content with admission in dental colleges for Bachelor of Dental Surgery (BDS) courses, where they could have easily gotten seats in medical colleges for MBBS, had they gotten a chance to take part in the mop-up round of counselling.

A boy whose Bihar rank was 405 couldn’t apply to the best-considered Bihar colleges for medical sciences namely, Patna Medical College and the second-best Indira Gandhi Institute of Medical Sciences which had six and nine seats, respectively after the second round of counselling. In another instance, the 14371 All India Rank (AIR) holder in NEET-UG 2019 and 981 Bihar rank holder, got admission in the state’s best college, Patna Medical College, in the ‘mop-up’ round of counselling, even when her rank was below the cut-off for the lowest-ranked Bettiah Medical College in the second round, which was 954 for the open category. She was not allotted any college in the first and second rounds. In the mop-up round, the cut-off state rank for an MBBS seat was 1224.

Bihar took recourse to a 2017 Supreme Court and a 2018 state government order to bar admitted students from the mop-up round. The 2017 Supreme Court order had stated that the students who take admissions in All India Quota seats would not be allowed to vacate their respective seats to ensure that very few seats are reverted to the state quota and that all India Quota seats are filled by India merit list only.