Hyderabad: Former health minister and BRS leader T. Harish Rao on Wednesday expressed serious concern over the state government’s new policy on MBBS admissions proving counter-productive for Telangana students.
Addressing a press conference at Telangana Bhavan here, the minister said Telangana students who went out of the state to pursue Intermediate, would become ineligible for admission into MBBS because of the new definition of local category by the present government.
Going by the same rule, even MBBS graduates from Telangana, who because of their merit pursued medicine in top-notch institutes like AIIMS, will become non-locals in their own state and become ineligible for admission into postgraduate courses, he added.
The minister criticised the government for lacking clarity on the issue and its handling of the sensitive issue was similar to a bull entering a China shop.
He sought to know why the State government did not implement the new definition during the recently concluded counselling for admission into engineering. The universities have been adopting the old rule that students would have studied for any four years between Class 6 and 12 in Telangana to be considered as locals, he added.
Harish Rao said the number of MBBS seats has increased from 2,850 to 9,000 during the BRS regime. The 15 per cent unreserved category was restricted to colleges that existed before the formation of Telangana and a 100 per cent seats, excluding the 15 per cent quota for All India admissions, were reserved for Telangana students in new colleges because of which locals got additional 520 seats.
Similarly, by implementing 100 per cent reservation for locals in the B category also helped in the Telangana students getting 1071 additional seats, he added.
Referring to the neighbouring states like Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Karnataka having clear definition about the local category, the former minister said the government should have appointed a committee of experts, studied thoroughly and come up with a policy that would have helped the local students rather than depriving them of an opportunity to pursue medicine.
