Making a significant amendment to the admission guidelines for MBBS and BDS programmes, the Telangana government has recently reserved around 85 per cent of Category B or management quota seats in private medical colleges for domicile students.
In line with the Medical and Health Department orders for minority and non-minority medical institutes, local students would get 85 per cent reservation in the 35 per cent B Category (management quota) seats in MBBS and BDS courses. A total of 1068 medical seats for local students at the state’s 24 private medical institutions will be added because of this decision.
The four minority and 20 non-minority private medical institutions in the state have an intake capacity of 3,750. Of these, 3200 are in non-minority institutions. Thirty-five per cent of these 3200 seats were under Category B or management quota seats, open for students across the country till last year.
However, with the new order, Telangana students get access to 952 of 1,120 or 85 per cent of the total category B seats, The remaining 168 seats, or 15 per cent of the total 1,120 seats, would be open quota seats where students from other states could compete with Telangana students.
A quarter of the 550 seats at minority institutions were previously classified as Category B seats, now 116 (or 85%) of the 137 seats will be available to Telangana students under the new admissions guidelines
The state government has argued that the lack of a special Telangana reservation for management quota seats was unfair to local students. The decision is made to increase opportunities for the locals who wish to pursue medical studies.
The move comes after Telangana’s Minister for Health T. Harish Rao recently asked higher authorities to submit a report after studying the system being followed in other states. In many states including Maharashtra, Punjab and Odisha among others, there were no open quota seats in category B seats in such institutions.