PG med seat racket: CB-CID to probe official-college nexus

Chennai

After finding that the pandemic has been taken advantage of to stage-manage and fill up nearly 74 seats with unmeritorious candidates this academic year, Justice N Anand Venkatesh wondered how the colleges got hold of these candidates when the final list given by the selection committee to these private colleges did not contain contact details.

“One must be too naive to think that this happened through coincidence or by sheer accident. Obviously, these are all candidates who are capable of pulling strings and already had a clear understanding with the college concerned,” he said.

“Conspiracy is something which can only be inferred or deduced from a given set of facts,” he observed, adding that the data that authorities provided clearly revealed a conspiracy between DME officials and self-financing colleges.

Every year, self-financing colleges devised some mechanism to fill up vacancies in this manner. It would be unjust to meritorious candidates if this situation was allowed to continue without anyone taking corrective steps, said the judge.

Seeking a report on the inquiry by January 30, he said the court wanted to take all efforts to cleanse the malice afflicting the post-graduate admission process instead of consigning the issue to the hands of fate.

“Rather, this court wants to take the bull by the horns and see how best the system can be improved.” The directions issued relates to pleas alleging failure to hold mop-up counselling while filling up vacant PG medical seats as per the seat matrix published by the DME at PSG Institute of Medical Science and Research, Coimbatore, and Karpaga Vinayaga Medical College, Chengalpattu.