Mumbai: At a time when thousands of NEET aspirants are struggling to secure one medical seat, Deepali Raut* (name changed) has landed two. Both at the same homeopathy medical college in Chinchwad.She is not alone. Several AYUSH aspirants across Maharashtra have been allotted two seats, either in the same college or different institutions, following what appears to be a botched admission exercise that has left some students spoilt for choice and others deprived of a chance to upgrade to better colleges.A senior official of state CET Cell acknowledged the problem, but said little could be done at this stage, given the deadline for completing admissions.The anomalies surfaced in the third merit list released on Oct 30. Under admission rules, candidates allotted seats through the 15% quota administered by the AYUSH Admissions Central Counselling Committee (AACCC) cannot simultaneously claim seats under the 85% state quota.But an Oct 26 order from AACCC changed the equation. Candidates who had failed to secure an upgrade between rounds one and three were permitted to surrender their seats, exit central counselling and participate in the state admission process.The order came too late for the state to accommodate the cancellations before finalising its allotments. The result: candidates appearing on both lists, with some securing two seats.Parent representative and admission counsellor Kailash Tosniwal said the last-minute decision had created confusion and placed candidates in a financial bind. Those who surrender seats allotted through the central quota in private colleges risk forfeiting substantial security deposits. Reserved-category students who give up their state quota seats, meanwhile, could lose the benefit of govt fee concessions at the start of the academic year.But the bigger casualty may be students who were waiting for an upgrade.Candidates holding two allotments must surrender one seat. These seats will now become available in the fourth round, from which students already allotted seats in the first three state counselling rounds are excluded. This creates a peculiar situation: candidates with lower NEET scores who remained unallotted could secure better colleges in the fourth round, while higher-scoring students who accepted seats earlier will have no opportunity to compete for them.Had the admissions been processed in accordance with the original rules, these seats could have been available for upgrades in the third round itself, Tosniwal said, blaming AACCC for the last-minute change. For students who have played by the rules, the consequences may be difficult to accept. Some have two seats to choose from. Others have lost their chance at a better one, said Tosniwal.
