Jammu, Jan 22 — The Jammu and Kashmir Board of Professional Entrance Examinations (JKBOPEE) on Thursday scheduled a physical round of counselling on January 24 for 50 MBBS students affected by the revocation of permission to the Shri Mata Vaishno Devi Institute of Medical Excellence (SMVDIME), offering relief after weeks of uncertainty.
In a notification uploaded on its website, the Board said the counselling would be conducted to accommodate the affected students in government medical colleges within Jammu and Kashmir against supernumerary seats created for the purpose. The counselling will be held at 10 am.
The notification said the 50 supernumerary seats, conveyed by the Health and Medical Education Department, will be distributed across seven government medical colleges in the region.
The decision follows a communication from the Health and Medical Education Department seeking JKBOPEE’s intervention in relocating students who were earlier provisionally allotted MBBS seats at SMVDIME, with the Board having earlier maintained that it was not competent to conduct fresh counselling on its own and that the issue of supernumerary seat allocation required a government-level decision.
Supernumerary seats are additional seats created over and above the sanctioned intake to accommodate exceptional situations, without affecting the existing admission matrix.
Earlier this month, the Medical Assessment and Rating Board of the National Medical Commission withdrew the letter of permission granted to SMVDIME, citing non-compliance with minimum standards. The withdrawal followed protests by right-wing groups after the allocation of seats to Kashmiri Muslim students through the NEET-UG process.
Meanwhile, Chief Minister Omar Abdullah said on Thursday that the Jammu and Kashmir government had resolved the issue of college allocation for students who were earlier selected for the MBBS course at SMVDIME.