• Out of 2,800 seats in Karnataka nearly 60% of BDS seats are not filled after the second round of counselling in Karnataka Examinations Authority (KEA) , for which a Dental Council of India (DCI) member suggested relaxing the eligibility criteria.
• DCI Member, Dr. Shivasharan told Times of India that out of 2,834 seats 1,678 are unfilled and he met the Medical Education Minister, K. Sudhakar on this regard for lowering the NEET eligibility by 20 percentile points as per the DCI suggestion.
• The DCI member has mentioned that the same situation has happened in the past also and to torrent the condition of vacant seats, the ministry of health and family welfare has lowered the NEET eligibility in the previous years with an extension of 15 days after the last date of admission.
• The Ministry of Health and Family Welfare has approved the same for the extension of BDS 2020-21 admission from 15.01.21 to 30.01.21. The percentile issue will also be looked at by the government hopefully.
• Dr. Shivasharan stated the key reason for more vacant seats in the colleges this year is because the colleges have upgraded their infrastructure and increased the intake of the students.
• For Example, the colleges which offered 150 medical seats previously have increased to 250 seats this year.
• Rajiv Gandhi University of Health Sciences (RGUHS) is planning to start a regional centre in Mangalore and the DCI will set up a Dental Research lab at Maryhill.
• The Country has 313 dental institutes out of which Karnataka has 44. A dental research lab will be highly beneficial especially for the post graduate students depending on medical research labs or NITK labs for their thesis.
• The Lab will have a full time staff who will dedicatedly take care of the medical research and the remuneration process will shortly commence, announced Dr. Shivasharan.