Kota (Rajasthan): The result of the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET UG 2022), the country's biggest medical entrance exam, was declared on September 7. Over 17.64 lakh students appeared in the test of which 9,93,069 candidates qualified, taking the overall percentage to 56.27%.
Last year, 56.34% cleared the exam, nearly the same as this year. These students will now have to go through the counselling process for admission in medical colleges. There are 97,293 seats this year, an increase of about 5900 seats since last year.
According to career counsellor, Parijat Mishra of Kota, the National Medical Commission has still not issued a Letter of Permission (LOP) to government and private medical colleges in many states. If and when the LOPs are issued, the number of seats, Mishra said, can increase beyond 1 lakh. "It will be a good step in the field of medical education that 1 lakh children will be able to study MBBS in India," he said.
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There is a craze among the students about government seats primarily because they are affordable with fees ranging from a few thousand rupees to Rs 3 lakhs. In private medical colleges, however, the same runs in tens of lakhs. Recently, several medical colleges were issued LOPs, according to Mishra. They include Dubri in Assam; Mahasamund in Chhattisgarh; Korba, Morbi in Gujarat; Panchmahal Godha, Porbandar; Faridabad in Haryana; Chikmagalur in Karnataka; Churachandpur in Manipur; Keonjhar, Sundargarh in Orissa; Chittorgarh, Dholpur, Sirohi in Rajasthan; Sriganganagar, Wanaparthy in Telangana; and Bhadradri Kothagudem, Jagityal, Mahbubabad, Nagarkurnool, Sangareddy, Barasat, Arrampai, Arambagh in West Bengal.
These colleges added around 2850 new seats. Apart from this, the National Medical Commission also issued LOP to the colleges of Udupi in Kerala, Osmanabad in Maharashtra and Uluberia in West Bengal.
