Domicile ruling to impact medical education in South Indian States

The Supreme Court's ruling is being considered as a significant setback for South Indian States that have invested heavily in establishing new medical colleges

Hyderabad: The Supreme Court’s judgment declaring domicile based reservation in States as impermissible is being considered as a significant setback for South Indian States that have invested heavily in establishing new medical colleges and increasing the number of MBBS and super-specialty medical seats.

In the last decade, the previous BRS government under former Chief Minister K Chandrashekhara Rao established 33 medical colleges. As a result of modernizing medical infrastructure, the PG specialty seats in Telangana State have increased to nearly 3,000 specialty seats.

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Out of 3,000 PG medical seats, roughly about 50 percent fall under the State quota of Telangana State. Students with domicile status in Telangana usually prefer these 1,500 PG seats, as they don’t have to travel to other Indian States to pursue specialty medical courses.

However, Wednesday’s judgment from the apex body opens-up these 1,500 PG medical seats to students from other Indian States. “The ruling completely removes domicile-based reservations for PG admissions. This means, Telangana State along with other South Indian States can’t reserve 50 percent of their Government medical PG seats exclusively for their own students,” medical education experts explained.

All the South Indian States, including Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Andhra Pradesh and Telangana State combined together have over 20,000 PG medical seats to offer. Out of these 20,000 PG medical seats, 50 percent are All India quota while remaining 50 percent are State quota.

“Earlier, 50 percent of PG medical seats under State quota were reserved for local students. Now, however, these seats are accessible to students from all Indian States. This means that students from other States will be eligible for these PG medical seats, if they complete only MBBS in Telangana State,” experts said.