बेबाक · Editorial
824 Empty MBBS Seats Show Medical Education Is Rationed by Fees, Software and Pay
A country that needs more doctors cannot let seats go empty for want of money, let counselling code quietly tilt outcomes, or leave its youngest doctors arguing over pay.
Seats Without Students
After NEET UG 2026 counselling, 824 MBBS seats remain vacant in deemed universities across Tamil Nadu and Puducherry. Educationists and experts quoted in reports on the vacancies give a plain reason: tuition fees are so high that financially constrained candidates cannot afford the seats on offer. Meanwhile, the Medical Counselling Committee (MCC) has released a revised provisional allotment list for the NEET UG 2026 stray vacancy round, the attempt to fill what is left. A country that still needs more doctors cannot treat this lightly. When qualified aspirants exist and seats exist, but the two never meet, the system has failed at its most basic task: turning merit into a place in a classroom.
Merit Priced Out
The core tension is clear. Deemed universities carry real costs, including faculty, teaching hospitals and equipment. Their case is that fees reflect what it takes to run a medical college without the public support that government colleges receive. That case deserves a fair hearing, because underfunded colleges produce poorly trained doctors. Yet a national entrance examination is meant to rank candidates by ability, not by family income. If one candidate on the merit list can afford a seat and the next cannot, then NEET has become a screen for wealth with an examination stapled to the front. Merit must include the chance to develop merit, and a fee wall closes that chance off.
When Code Decides Fairness
Fees are not the only barrier. A political party's leader has alleged that the MBBS counselling software of NTRUHS lets reserved-category candidates upgrade their college in subsequent rounds but bars them from upgrading their admission category. The claim is an allegation, and the university's account should be heard before any judgement is made. The underlying principle, however, holds regardless. Counselling algorithms are policy written in code. If a rule embedded in software can shift who gets a seat, it needs the same scrutiny and public explanation as a rule printed in a gazette. Institutions can revise their rules openly: MNLU Mumbai has revised its CLAT 2027 reservation rules to introduce 1 percent seats each for transgender candidates and orphans in its UG and PG law courses, with applications due by October 31.
The Doctors Already Inside
Access is only half the story. Students who get in must also be able to stay. The Jammu and Kashmir government has approved a substantial increase in the monthly stipend of MBBS and BDS interns, including foreign medical graduates, to Rs 25,000. AIMSA called off its strike and said its focus would now turn to a hike for postgraduate residents. In Lucknow, young MBBS doctors are protesting what they describe as a pay disparity, after approaching the Directorate General of Medical Education (DGME) and the Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS) for an explanation. The authorities' side of the Lucknow dispute deserves a hearing too. Even so, together these episodes suggest a recurring pattern: stipends and pay are too often settled one protest at a time rather than by a predictable, published norm.
What Should Change
Three steps are feasible now. First, regulators and state governments should publish fee data for every deemed university before counselling begins. They should also link vacant-seat counts to a needs-based scholarship or loan-guarantee pool, so that no qualified candidate walks away for want of money. Second, every counselling authority, including the Medical Counselling Committee and state health universities, should publish its seat-allotment rules and software logic, and commission an independent audit when candidates allege bias. Third, intern stipends and resident pay should follow a published, periodically revised floor. That would help end the cycle of strikes and grievances directed at directorates. A country that wants hospitals that heal must first make sure its doctors can afford to train and can afford to stay.
A medical seat that stays empty because a capable student could not pay is not a market outcome; it is a public loss.
What this editorial rests on
Drawn from our live multi-newsroom feed — read the reporting at source.
An editorial is the considered opinion of the FarziUPSC desk, argued from the sourced reporting above and written under our published persona, बेबाक. We name institutions, not parties. If we are wrong, we will say so. How we work →