VIJAYAWADA: Faced by the problem of students holding on to the seats till last moment and then vacating them by not turning up in spite of taking admission, thereby rendering that seat useless for a deserving student, the officials of NTRUHS want to take a firm decision this year to prevent the practice at any cost by taking strict action against the erring candidates.
“Even after the decision made to withhold the certificates of the candidates, a few candidates left the seats vacant after paying fine. We have to make sure that this will not repeat again and we are discussing with the officials in this regard,” NTRUHS Registrar Dr S Appala Naidu told TNIE. The authorities are in fact mulling strict action against the students who are blocking medical PG seats in various colleges across the State.
In the year 2017, the State government brought new guidelines, where the certificates of the candidates were not returned and they would have been barred from attending counselling for the next three years and had to pay `3 lakh to the university as fine. Despite the State government planning to take strict action against the students blocking the seats and not turning up, during 2018 post counselling a few seats fell vacant and the situation didn’t get any better.
In 2018, those from government colleges itself, four to six candidates left the seats without joining. In private colleges, it was about 10 seats, where the student after securing the seat, didn’t turn up to join the course. However, the candidates took back their certificates by paying Rs 3 lakh fine. In the year 2017, the State government issued GO 67 to restrain the practice of blocking the seats. As per GO 67, there was a three-year ban for writing the entrance test for the students who leave their seats once after getting admission in a college and they should pay Rs 3 lakh as fine.
In addition to this, the university officials also confiscated the certificates, which were submitted during the counselling process, of the students, who didn’t join upon getting an admission. However, a couple of students moved the High Court and got the orders in favour of them, where they paid the amount and took away the certificates. But the seats which they didn’t join, were left vacant and were not filled by anyone.
This year, the officials are planning to stop the practice either by increasing the fine or withholding the certificates.