To forestall misuse of Non-Residential Indian allotment seats for admission to postgraduate medical courses in private medical colleges of the state, Baba Farid University of Health Sciences has demanded testimony of NRIs and sponsors of NRIs to determine the eligibility of applicants.
The sponsors are required to provide evidence of his/her relation with the candidate under NRI quota seats and also needed to submit details of their passport, visa and embassy certificate to the university. To ensure that the sponsors fund the entire course fee of the candidate, it is obligatory to render affidavits to this effect.
15 percent of seats are reserved for NRIs for PG course of study in private colleges and guidance for the admission in PG courses is under implementation in BFUHS.
A NRI candidate has to pay 1.25 lakh US dollar for 3-year MD/MS and 20,000 US dollar for non-clinical seat as tuition fee, along with 15 per cent of the tuition fee as registration and continuation fee.
The candidate are eligible under NRI quota only if they deposit their fee in foreign currency from their own NRI account/Parents NRI account.
According to Sources of BFUH, some of the medical institutions grant admission to a certain number of students under NRI quota by charging a higher amount of fee. In these cases, neither the students who get admissions under NRI category nor their parents are NRIs. In fact, under this category, many less meritorious students who can afford to bring more money, get admissions under this category.
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Such seats should be utilized bona fide by the NRIs only for their children or wards and the merit is not given a complete go-by, the medical university want to ensure the genuineness of all such candidates, said a senior functionary in BFUHS.
To fill all NRI quota seats in private medical colleges, the Ministry of Health & Family Welfare has amended the minimum qualifying percentile for these seats on April 27, lowering it to 262 marks (35th percentile) in NEET-PG (2018). Earlier this minimum qualifying percentile for these seats was 50 and 321 marks. The minimum qualifying marks and percentile has been lowered as many private medical colleges face difficulty in finding the NRI candidates with 50 percentile cut off.
If a student has no parents or near relatives or taken as a ward by some other nearest relative such students also may be considered for admission provided the guardian has bona fide treated the student as a ward and such guardian shall file an affidavit indicating the interest shown in the affairs of the student and also his relationship with the student and such person also should be an NRI, and ordinarily residing abroad.
By Sowmya Sangam
