The Haryana government is clearly giving preference to private medical colleges by scheduling the date for the last counselling session a day before the counselling date scheduled for government colleges.

The general the practice is to hold counseling in government colleges prior to that in private colleges. However, in Haryana, the admission committee formed by the state government has altered the process in last counseling much to the disappointment of students and parents.

In the last counseling session, the date for counseling in private colleges and government colleges has been scheduled on September 28 and September 29 respectively. This means the students will have to choose from private colleges first. As the seats in medical colleges are already limited, most of the students called for counselling would go for private college to reserve their seats. It is worth mentioning that the fee in private colleges is very high as compared to the government medical colleges.

This major irregularity has been noticed in the admission process in Haryana at a time when the medical aspirants queue up for counseling and admission on limited number of seats in government and private medical colleges in the country.

Given the exponentially high fees in private medical colleges, if students book seats in private colleges on September 28, they will not be able to take admission in a government college even if they deserve a seat in a government college in counseling scheduled for the next day.

Apart from vested interest in favoring private colleges, no other reason makes sense for this unprecedented and unfortunate decision.

This action will adversely affect the students who will be in a dilemma on September 28 if they get a seat allotted in a private college. Should they wait for the counseling in government colleges the next day at the risk of losing an entire year in case they don't get a seat in the government college, said few concerned parents.

The supreme court verdict on NEET was to stop illegal practices in medical colleges. In another judgement on fees regulation, the apex court had said that fees of colleges in any state will be decided by a committee headed by a retired high court judge. This committee will also comprise of officials of state bureaucracy, medical council of India (MCI) and health ministry. But states always remained mute spectators and private colleges kept on extorting money in the name of donation and capitation fees. There are several instances where SC categorically said that if any college is found taking capitation fees, their affiliation will be cancelled. But because of regulatory body like MCI and state machinery working hand in glove with the private colleges, this illegal practice of demanding capitation fees couldn’t be stopped.

"In order to weed out corruption from medical education, SC gave the above judgements on NEET, central government is planning to replace MCI with National Medical Council, and the state is going in opposite direction in a bid to serve vested interests of private colleges,” said ex-official of MCI.