MCC has announced that NEET UG and PG counselling for All India Quota (AIQ) medical seats will begin in 2021 in four rounds. A total of 50 percent of postgraduate seats and 15 percent of undergraduate seats that are part of the central pool will be affected by this policy. In a recent ruling, the Supreme Court of India approved the new counseling scheme of the MCC. There will be four rounds of MCC NEET Counseling 2021 – AIQ round 1, AIQ round 2, AIQ mop-up round, and AIQ stray vacancy round.
Prior to this, MCC conducted NEET counseling in two rounds followed by mop up rounds only for deemed and central universities. As a result of the ruling, the following changes have been made to the NEET counselling process:
- All India quota seats that were earlier reverted to states after round 2 counseling will now continue to be filled in the mop up and stray vacancy rounds.
- Only fresh registrations will be accepted in the first three rounds and not in the stray vacancy round.
- The options for free exit and upgrading will only be available in the first round of NEET counselling. If a candidate is offered a seat in the second round and so on, the candidate cannot request an upgrade.
- Candidates who join the allotted seat in round 2 or in the further rounds cannot resign from that seat or participate in the further rounds of counselling.
- Those who do not take admission in the second round may apply in the mop-up round if they forfeit their security deposit.
- Both the changes will take place for NEET UG and PG counselling from the 2021-22 academic year, according to a statement by the MCC.
“This is for information to all the participating states, union territories (UTs), participating universities, institutes, colleges and the participating candidates of NEET UG, PG that, MCC will be conducting online 4 rounds of All India Quota Counselling (AIQ Round 1, AIQ Round 2, AIQ Mop-Up Round and AIQ Stray Vacancy Round) from the academic year 2021-22 onwards in compliance of the order dated December 16, 2021 in special leave to appeal before the Supreme Court of India,” the MCC has stated in a notification on its official websitehttps://docs.google.com/viewer?url=https://www.ruseducation.in/neet-2021-counselling-to-be-held-in-4-rounds.pdf&embedded=true
The decision came after two Kerala NEET aspirants filed a petition with the Supreme Court advocating that MCC should define AIQ for medical admission as its own pool to be filled up by only candidates on the basis of the all-India rank list or, alternately, conduct mop-up rounds to fill up the seats.” The petitioners claim they were denied admission to MBBS through the NEET 2020 examination even though they ranked 15979 and 17131 with a NEET score of 609 and 606 respectively out of 720.
According to the petitioners, 1,730 seats were sent back to the State Quota after Round 2 was concluded and filled by students with lesser marks. Due to delayed 85% state quota counselling, students do not join the second round of AIQ counselling and instead apply for the remaining AIQ seats, the petitioners argued.
