Apex court refuses to extend counselling deadline for PG medical seats

The Supreme Court on Friday refused to extend the schedule of counselling for filling up as many as 603 vacant seats in post-graduate medical and dental courses in deemed universities and private colleges.

A vacation bench of justices Deepak Gupta and Surya Kant disposed of a plea by the Education Promotion Society of India, a registered group of over 1,300 educational institutions of the country, seeking to extend the counselling to facilitate admission on vacant seats.

The top court had earlier said that the question is not whether it has power to do it but whether it should allow the deemed universities and colleges to fill up their vacant seats by making an exception to the set schedule of admissions.

Deemed universities and colleges had claimed that they have around 1,000 seats vacant in the post-graduate medical courses and if stray vacancy counselling round is extended then such seats could be filled.