CHENNAI: Health Minister KG Arunraj on Friday blamed the DMK for surrendering super speciality seats reserved for in-service doctors to All India Quota (AIQ) during previous years. The accusation comes after Leader of Opposition Udhayanidhi Stalin on Thursday wrote to Chief Minister Vijay to protect super speciality (SS) seats reserved for in-service doctors, and accused the present state counsel of not arguing the case effectively in the Supreme Court.
Responding to Udhayanidhi on ‘X’, the health minister said the state has total 422 super speciality seats, of which 219 are reserved for state quota. In the previous years, the SS seats reserved for in-service doctors were surrendered to the AIQ. “In 2024, 119 seats, and in 2025, 145 seats were surrendered to the AIQ. This is history.”
After surrendering the seats, the cut-off was reduced and all were filled in AIQ. This has affected government doctors, Arunraj claimed.
“This year when 151 seats were not filled, the government refused to surrender the SS seats to AIQ. In the Supreme Court, the state’s counsel argued the case strongly. The union government counsel informed that percentile will be redacted later for filling SS seats. Following the Supreme Court order on May 29, the government filed a review petition on 4 June,” the health minister said. Meanwhile, the CPM on Friday urged the state to take immediate steps to prevent the vacant SS seats from being surrendered to the AIQ.
Numbers game
According to TNIE reports, the state surrendered 145 SS in-service doctors’ quota seats for the 2023-24 academic year after the first round of counselling. The then health minister Ma Subramanian in June 2025 wrote a letter to Union Health Minister JP Nadda requesting his personal intervention to ensure all 50% super speciality seats earmarked for in-service candidates under the state quota are retained and made available in round 2 state-level NEET-SS counselling conducted by the State Selection Committee.
According to officials, after the state surrendered 145 seats, the union health ministry returned 62 after conducting a second round of counselling with a reduced percentile after they were unfilled. The state then conducted the third round of counselling with the cut-off redacted to 0 percentile. Even after that 24 seats were left unfilled, and the state didn’t return the seats. Before 2016 the State Selection Committee was conducting counselling for 100% SS seats. In 2016, the SC ordered the surrender of all SS seats to AIQ. After the DMK government took charge, in 2022 a case was filed in the SC which ordered that the state can fill 50% of seats reserved for in-service doctors by the State Selection Committee. Since then the state has been reserving 50% SS seats for in-service doctors.