Seat allotment of MBBS as per SOP : Meghalaya Health Minister

Meghalaya Health and Family Welfare Minister, Wailadmiki Shylla on Monday said the issue of seat allotment of MBBS from state quota has been resolved following a meeting with the Khasi Students’ Union (KSU)
He said that the allotment of MBBS seats under the state quota was done in accordance with the Standard Operating Procedure (SOP). However, the KSU demanded scrapping of the Standard Operating Procedures for seat allotment, after two non-tribal students were allotted MBBS seat in the unreserved category.
The government has already put on hold the dates for acceptance of the selected candidates to pursue MBBS course after the KSU and other pressure groups had strongly objected over the selection of Ghosh and Chakravarty in place of other Khasi students who have scored higher marks than the two of them.
Ghosh, with a NEET score of 472, and Chakravarty, with a score of 442, have been allowed to study MBBS outside the state under the Unreserved Category, when the category is open to all residents of Meghalaya, including Khasi, Jaintia, and Garo communities. KSU president Lambokstarwell Marngar argued that a Khasi student had higher marks, but opted for the reserved category.
“The Health minister has assured us to rectify the list of selected candidates. We do not want to see such irregularities to be repeated in the near future,” Marngar told reporters. Under the state reservation policy, 37 seats are reserved for the Khasi-Jaintia including Persons with Disabilities (PwD) category, 37 for Garo and PwD category, unreserved 14 and 5 seats for SC and other STs.
According to the reservation policy, a reserved category student can also apply in the unreserved category. Since the student had higher marks than a non-tribal student in the unreserved category she decided to switch, which would enable another Khasi-Jaintia student into the reserved category. Meghalaya has 93 MBBS seats from the government quota, out of which 53 are for the central pool, NEIGRIHMS 14, RIMS, Imphal 13, Assam 10 and Tripura 3.
Shylla clarified that a student opted for the Khasi-Jaintia reserved category and was later upgraded to the unreserved category since her marks are higher than the other candidates.
“Later when the concern was raised by the NGOs, she decided to opt for the unreserved category,” the Health Minister added.