The Supreme Court, on Tuesday, extended the last date for admission in deemed medical universities by a week to September 7. This comes after reports that 5,200 of 8,700 MBBS seats continue to lie vacant.

As per reports, there are 947 vacant seats in Tamil Nadu alone. The central body had conducted two rounds of counselling and a mop-up session in the state. There has reportedly been a 30% reduction in seats across the country but in Tamil Nadu, only 20% of seats were taken. 

The Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS), which is responsible for conducting the counselling process informed the court that over 5,500 seats are still vacant in deemed universities. Three rounds of centralised counselling have been conducted so far. The court directed that the seats should be filled up from a pool of qualified 55,000 students to maintain the ratio of 1:10.

“This time we conducted counselling simultaneously for all India quota seats in government colleges and for deemed universities. Many students, who locked deemed universities as their option, did not join them in all the three rounds probably because they got admissions elsewhere or felt it was too expensive,“ said a senior DGHS official to ToI.

The Tamil Nadu government's NEET bubble burst on August 23 after the Apex Court directed it to conduct MBBS/BDS admissions solely on the basis of NEET marks. The verdict came after the Centre informed the court that there was no ordinance in the works to exempt the state from NEET.