Updated on: Tuesday, June 23, 2015
Worst fears of the latest batch of Class 12 students hoping for an MBBS seat may come true with the Tamil Nadu government on Monday telling the Madras high court that students from previous batches cannot be prevented from taking part in the ongoing admission counselling. While lawyers representing the fresh batch of students said more than 1,000 of the available 2,257 seats will be garnered by students of previous batches, owing to their better cutoff marks, the government maintained that only 548 seats may go to them, constituting a mere 24% of the seats up for grabs.
The high court reserved its orders on a petition seeking to bar Class 12 students of previous years from the MBBS admission process this year, but once again made it clear that while counselling could go ahead, authorities should not issue any allotment letters or admit cards to students till it delivers the verdict . On Monday, many candidates from previous years too joined the fray and argued that they could not be shut out of the counselling exercise when no rule prevented their participation. Many of them did not join any course last year, took a chance and waited for their MBBS seats this year, their counsel argued.
Earlier, seeking to drive home how even a margin of 0.25 marks would play havoc with medical ranking, V Raghavachari, counsel for fresh batch of students, said a mere quarter of a mark difference between the two batches would result in a loss of 717 seats for the students of 2014-15 batch.