NEET: Private doctors upset over incentive marks to government counterparts

The Non-Governmental Service Doctors’ Association (NGSDA) office-bearers said here on Monday that the government had meted out ‘gross injustice’ to them through Government Order (GO) number 1054. The GO enabled government doctors to take nearly all available seats, they said. 

The association said they should get due consideration at the upcoming NEET PG 2018 counselling. “While the state has been fighting against the Supreme Court (SC) in support of its doctors, it has been going against the SC order, Medical Council of India rules, and National Human Rights Commission criteria,” N Karthikeyan, secretary, NGSDA, said. 

While there were 20,000 non-governmental candidates and 3,000 government students competing for the 1,200 PG seats in the state, 1,100 seats, i.e. 98 per cent, were taken by government students, Dr Karthikeyan said. 

“A government candidate with rank 40,000 managed to get a seat while a non-governmental student with rank 3,000 failed to do so,” he said. “The Supreme Court had said that doctors working in 72 Primary Health Centres in remote, hilly and tribal areas will get some weightage. However, the state government ensured that PG doctors working in 1,747 PHCs got the weightage,” he said. 

Opposing this, the NGSDA approached the HC. Subsequently, the SC asked the state government to follow MCI rules. 

“However, the state government, immediately issued an order – GO 75. The order named 16 districts with ‘category 2 difficult areas.’