Karnataka likely to make 10-year domicile must for PG course aspirants

Karnataka likely to make 10-year domicile must for PG course aspirants

Even as the Aam Aadmi Party proposes to reserve college seats in Delhi exclusively for locals, the Congress government in Karnataka has decided to introduce a new stringent 10-year domicile condition on aspirants for postgraduate medical and dental seats in colleges in the state in an effort to ensure that more local students gain admissions to PG courses. Medical education minister Dr Sharan Prakash Patil, while announcing the admission process for PG courses for the 2014-15 academic period here Friday, said the government has tried to ensure that more students from Karnataka get access to the 1010 government quota PG seats in the medical and dental streams for the academic year. “A 10-year domicile condition is being introduced for admissions to government quota PG seats this year to protect the interests of local students. Previously, there were no domicile conditions and the majority of seats was being garnered by outsiders,’’ the medical education minister said. Under the new domicile conditions, only students who have studied in Karnataka for years or children of a parent who has studied in the state for a minimum of 10 years are eligible for the government quota PG seats. The minister said the measure was being taken because the state was surrendering 50 per cent of its PG medical and dental seats to an all-India quota while the remaining caters to Karnataka students. The state government has decided to conduct PG entrance exams for the 2014-15 academic year through the National Board of Exams for the government quota in an effort to bring transparency into a system plagued by complaints of irregularities while being handled by the state government’s Rajiv Gandhi University for Health Sciences. From the 2015-16 academic year, the state government has agreed to conduct all PG admissions through the merit list generated by the AIPGMEE national entrace test conducted by the NBE – which will result in all aspirants taking only one exam for entrance for admissions to all the 2,000-plus PG seats available in government and private colleges in Karnataka.