According to officials, the counselling will begin for all central universities, deemed Universities and 50% of all India quota seats and 50% state quota seats of medical and dental colleges simultaneously.
They further said that the Medical Counselling Committee (MCC) under the Directorate General of Health Services, Ministry of Health will conduct the counselling in online mode.
During the counselling process for admission to all India quota seats, state medical and dental colleges, and central and deemed universities, only students who have qualified in the NEET-PG 2022 exam will be able to fill their choices with respect to courses and colleges.
As per officials, the government has decided to conduct a special round of counselling without any cut-off percentile eligibility to prevent wastage of seats and in the larger public interest as a one-time measure, while also paying attention to the 748 seats which are still lying vacant in NEET Superspeciality counselling for the academic year 2021.
They said that the special mop-up round II for NEET-SS 2021 counselling will begin in the next week starting from Tuesday.
Notably, NEET-PG is held in January and the counselling starts in March,but because of the COVID pandemic and the postponement of the last year's admission process, this year's exam was conducted on May 21 and the results were announced on June 1, said a senior official.
The official said that inspections of medical colleges are being carried out by the NMC and the last date of issuing letter of permission is August 15.
It has been decided to start the counselling process from September 1 so that all the new seats can be included in the first round of counselling itself, he added.
Meanwhile, the NEET UG medical entrance exam saw 95% attendance on Sunday, the National Testing Agency (NTA) informed. As many as 18,72,329 candidates (of which 10.64 lakh were women) had registered for the exams this year, which had received the highest number of applications ever.
For the first time, over 18 lakh candidates registered for the exam, a considerable increase of over 2.5 lakh from last year. In 2021, over 15.44 lakh candidates appeared for the exam, which was conducted at 3,858 centres. Of these, at least 8.70 lakh students had qualified.
NEET-UG is the qualifying entrance exam for admission to Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery (MBBS), Bachelor of Dental Surgery (BDS), Bachelor of Ayurveda, Medicine and Surgery (BAMS), Bachelor of Siddha Medicine and Surgery (BSMS), Bachelor of Unani Medicine and Surgery (BUMS), and Bachelor of Homeopathic Medicine and Surgery (BHMS) and BSc(H) Nursing courses.
