Sinduja Jane By

Express News Service

CHENNAI: Thirteen out of 722 seats, or a meagre 1.8 per cent. That is all toppers of NEET-PG examination among the non-service doctors (who are not serving in government hospitals) managed to get during the first phase of counselling for postgraduate seats in Tamil Nadu that was held earlier this month.

The ongoing second phase is slightly better. On Thursday, day two of counselling in this phase, 38 private candidates obtained seats against 308 government service doctors though much of them were allegedly accommodated in PG diploma and non-clinical courses and not in the more-in-demand clinical masters degree courses.

The government’s manoeuvre to escape the wrath of the government doctors agitating against the Madras High Court order abolishing 50 per cent reservation for them in government quota PG seats has hit the prospects of high-performing private sector candidates, including even the SC communities, who failed to get even a diploma seat.

After the court ruled against reservation for in-service doctors but permitted it to allot incentives to those serving in areas identified as remote or hilly, the State government notified most of the rural areas as remote/hilly, allege private candidates.

This had a big impact on the ongoing counselling as all government service doctors posted at PHCs and other hospitals in these areas stood to gain 10 marks for each year they served.

This changed the rank list, which, the other side alleges, is akin to rigging and gerrymandering. According to them, there could be less than 100 service doctors who work in areas that are actually remote or hilly.

S Prakash, a Scheduled Caste category candidate from Madurai, is one such disappointed professional. Having scored 884.6666 marks in NEET-PG, he stood 242 in the State in the all-India rank list, a mark good enough to get him a non-clinical masters degree seat under the all-India quota in a medical college in Mumbai. But he decided against it, expecting that he would get a clinical degree seat in the State quota in his native.

“But after calculating the incentive awarded to service doctors, my rank dropped to 383, not enough for even a diploma seat. I’ve lost hopes of pursuing masters,” said the dejected young doctor, who had come to attend the second phase of counselling at the Government Multi-Super-Speciality Hospital on Friday.

Another heartbroken aspirant was K Anbarasan, who was originally at 253rd rank in the State, which, however, went down to 415 after the service doctors below him on the list were given the incentive. But not all doctors stop with blaming their fate to have written the test in the wrong year. A few of them have approached the Madras High Court.

“We need to know how the powers given to the State government to notify remote and hilly areas have turned in favour of service doctors,” said N Karthikeyan, one of the petitioners.

However, as Express had reported, the State health department has been struggling with shortage of specialists at taluk and district headquarters hospitals due to non-service candidates selected under government quota violating the mandatory two-year service bond.

This year’s fact sheet

Clinical degrees

Anaesthesiology

Obstetrics and Gynaecology

General medicine

Orthopaedics

Paediatrics

Ophthalmology

Psychiatric medicine and others

Non-clinical degrees

Anatomy; Biochemistry; Community medicine; Microbiology; Pathology; Pharmacology; Physiology; Forensic medicine

In all, 13 non-service doctors secured seats in the first phase of counselling

2 secured diploma seats

3 secured non-clinical masters degree

8 secured clinical masters degree

Last year: Total: 1,235; Non-service: 381 (30.8 per cent)