The Medical Council of India has forced a medical college based in Nellur, Tamil Nadu to discharge 36 students who were admitted to the college outside the NEET system.
NEET or National Eligibility cum Entrance Test is the pan-India entrance examination for recruitment for all medical colleges in the country.
According to the Medical Council of India, Ponnaiyah Ramajayam Institute of Medical Sciences based in Manamai in Nellur district of Tamil Nadu went ahead and admitted students outside the NEET rank list.
However, given that the final certificates are given by the MCI, the college was forced to discharge the students after a directive from the body.
The test, which was deemed illegal by the Supreme Court in 2013, was restored by a higher bench of the court last year.
The test held last year was supposed to be the basis for admission to the nearly 65,000 MBBS seats in the country.
However, some politicians — many of whom run medical colleges — in states such as Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Maharashtra opposed the exam.
Non-NEET recruitment helps college managements make money in the form of ‘donations’ running into millions of rupees.
The central government recently rejected Tamil Nadu’s demand that the institutions in the state be exempted from the common entrance test.
The NEET was conducted in Assamese, Bengali, Gujarati, Kannada, Marathi, Oriya, Tamil, Telugu, Hindi and English.