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Medical Seats Allotment through Video Conferencing

The Medical seats allotment scheme is being overseen by the office of Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS) under Min. of Health & Family Welfare. As per the approved scheme, National Informatics Centre had been giving technical support in terms of specially designed software taking care of all policy stipulations and court orders for intake of students. The admission is based on eligible students getting into the Rank list after undergoing an entrance examination conducted on All India basis by Central Board of Secondary Education & All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi for Undergraduate courses and Postgraduate courses respectively. The Rank list, in turn, is used for Seat Allotment by DGHS. Thus, the total process enables All India based allotment of seats giving freedom of choice to the rank holders for selecting a course and institution of study by appearing before a Counselling Committee constituted for allotment of seats by DGHS.

The afore-mentioned process got further strengthened in 2007 by facilitating the region wise rank holders to participate in the Counselling and Seat allotment process for admissions to courses and colleges through Video Conferencing for which, again, NIC was mandated by Hon'ble Supreme Court of India to organize IT support and assist DGHS in the conduct of entire allotment process. Presently, Video conferencing based personal appearance had been implemented with Counselling venues in Chennai, Mumbai, Kolkatta with New Delhi as the Counselling cum Allotment venue. During the last couple of years, SC, ST, OBC and PH reservations by 200 point Roster System also had been implemented. Health Informatics Division of NIC is actively involved in the process from the beginning of the scheme.

Under-Graduate Seats Allotment

• 15% seats of all recognized Medical and Dental Colleges (except colleges in Andhra Pradesh and Jammu & Kashmir) are reserved for All India quota of allotment to the rank holders, every academic year.
• More than 2500 MBBS and around 255 BDS seats are available in 148 colleges across India.
• CBSE conducts entrance examination and declares the Rank and wait Lists.
• Normally 1st Round of Allotment starts from the 2nd week of June, every year after announcement of Rank list by CBSE. Allotment is done in two rounds but extended to one more round, if specifically ordered by court.

Post-Graduate Counselling

• 50% seats of all recognized Medical and Dental Colleges (except colleges in Andhra Pradesh and Jammu & Kashmir) are reserved for All India quota of allotment to the rank holders, every year.
• More than 4500 MD/MS/ Diploma in 65 disciplines and 157 PG Dental seats in 9 disciplines on all India basis.
• AIIMS, New Delhi conducts entrance examination and declares the Rank and wait Lists.
• Normally 1st Round of Allotment starts from the 3rd week of February, every year after announcement of Rank list by AIIMS, New Delhi. Allotment is done in two rounds but extended to one more round, if specifically ordered by court.

Presently, four Counselling locations, as given above, are connected by Virtual Private Network (VPN) on NICNET through high speed terrestrial and VSAT connectivity with sufficient redundancy & fall-back mechanism, thus ensuring uninterrupted VC based counseling by personal appearance by Rank holders as per the choice of venue given in the application form filled in by the candidate. In addition, all centres have Local Area Network (LAN) based CCTV video display systems displaying the vacancies and current allotment, thus providing integrated view of vacancies in all the colleges as well as allotment information.

Database Server, web & Application server and Allotment PC are installed at the main Counselling Centre at New Delhi. The PC clients for Display system, Registration and Document verification at all venues are connected through VPN on NICNET with the Main Counselling Centre to access the main servers. The Seat allotment, vacancies, Report Generation facilities, extensive built-in queries, Allotment and Display Software are designed on .NET based technology with SQL Server as RDBMS.

LAN and CCTV set-up at New Delhi Counselling Venue

The software is based on the optimized work-flow requirements of the Allotment process with the following basic assumptions:

• Every Allotment of College/Subject through computer is done at Main Counselling Centre.
• Merit-holders who have opted for any of the Counselling Centres, namely, New Delhi, Chennai, Mumbai and Kolkatta will appear in their respective Centres in order of their merit. The Counselling Committee at New Delhi allots the chosen college/subject of the Rank holder after confirmation over VC. The same information is updated in the Allotment PC installed at Main Counselling Centre.
• On updating the allotment of a seat to the Rank holder, Current Allotment status and Current Vacancy Position are displayed through the NICNET based VPN network to the display clients which, in turn, connects to the CCTV Display System at each venue.

Pictorial representation of Medical Seats Allotment Systems

The allotment letters are generated by the allotment software at the end of each counseling session (forenoon and afternoon) on each counseling day and given to the Merit-holders at each Counselling venue. These letters need to be handed over to the Principals of the colleges by the Rank holder at the time of joining the allotted college.

At the end of each counseling day, letters are generated thro' Computers for college principals, Secretary (Medical) and Director (Health Services) of the State Governments informing them of the allotment done by the DGHS in respect of their college/State.

A web page has been designed wherein the allotment schedule, instructions and information relating to the allotment process are put for the viewing by the general public through Ministry's web site (mohfw.nic.in). In the same website, the Composite allotment list and current vacancy position at the end of each Counselling day are A web page has been designed wherein the allotment schedule, instructions and information relating to the allotment process are put for the viewing by the general public through Ministry's web site (mohfw.nic.in). In the same website, the Composite allotment list and current vacancy position at the end of each Counselling day are also published in the same website for general public use. This webpage is extensively viewed by the candidates and their parents, which in turn, facilitates them in deciding on suitable options before they come to the counseling venue for allotment.

Counselling Hall

From the implementation of the On-line Medical Seats Allotment System in the academic year 1993-94, the software went thro' many changes due to court orders and due to implementation of roster based reservations and Multi-location VC based Counselling and Allotment. It is worth to mention that till now, there is no court case regarding the allotment process thro' this software from its inception. Candidates appreciate the transparency as well as better service delivery by instantaneous availability of information related to allotment and vacancies as well as dissemination of information related to allotment process through website. Further, it has eased travel miseries of the Rank holders since personal appearance can be availed in any of the multi-location counselling venues. Ministry's website has very high hits on Counselling days, thus showing the interest of the general public to avail information related to Medical Seat vacancies & Allotment.

Manoj Kumar Saxena, Senior Systems Analyst
manoj-nb@nic.in