About 150 out of 519 MBBS students from various Indian medical colleges who were thrown out by the Medical Council of India (MCI) for violating Supreme Court orders on counselling before admissions protested outside Union health minister J P Nadda’s residence on Wednesday.
In Delhi, the protesting students, some with parents, said they were getting desperate and would not know what to do if justice was denied to them. One of the parents said the students had stopped eating and drinking, many were depressed.
A Supreme Court had in an order on September 28, 2016, directed that all admissions had to be done after counselling by the state governments.The students were asked by MCI to leave as they had been admitted without counselling in 17 medical colleges in the country out of which 14 were in Uttar Pradesh.
Many of the students already in MBBS programmes for three months were shocked to get notices from MCI asking them to vacate their seats. Those protesting in Delhi said they were forced to go for direct admissions despite high scores in the tough medical college entrance test NEET ( National Eligibility cum Entrance Test) as the counselling process was “too slow” and they had not managed to get admission till October 6, 2016, a day before the last date of counselling. All of the 519 students took direct admission on October 7.
Shekhar Tripathy 26, studying in Hind Medical College near Lucknow, says his dreams are shattered. “We were attending classes for the last three months and all of a sudden MCI served us letters to cancel our admissions. All my relatives, family members and friends know that I am pursuing MBBS and I will become a doctor. Now what will I tell them? I have no options left,” he said.