Supreme Court Intervention Leads to Addition of 49 PG Medical Seats in Round III Counselling
In a significant development for medical aspirants across India, the Medical Counselling Committee (MCC) has taken decisive action following the Supreme Court's directions in a petition filed by affected candidates. The regulatory body has officially added 49 postgraduate medical seats from the Hamdard Institute of Medical Sciences and Research (HIMSR) to the Round III seat matrix, enabling students to exercise their choices immediately without further delay.
Nationwide Eligibility Through Centralised Counselling Process
The admissions for these newly added seats will be conducted through the centralised All India Quota counselling system, which makes candidates from across all states eligible to participate. While the majority of these seats are located in Delhi, where HIMSR is based, the national counselling process ensures that applicants from every corner of the country can compete for these valuable opportunities in postgraduate medical education.
Supreme Court's Student-Centric Approach
The Supreme Court demonstrated a student-centric approach by permitting counselling for the 2025–26 academic year despite the fact that the consent of affiliation from Jamia Hamdard Deemed to be University had not been formally issued. The court explicitly noted that procedural delays should not result in students losing an entire academic year, emphasizing the importance of protecting educational opportunities for aspiring medical professionals.
Diverse Disciplines and Categories Covered
The 49 seats span a wide range of clinical and non-clinical disciplines, offering opportunities in multiple medical specialties:
- Clinical Disciplines: General medicine, general surgery, paediatrics, orthopaedics, obstetrics and gynaecology, anaesthesiology, and radiodiagnosis
- Non-Clinical Disciplines: Pathology, pharmacology, and microbiology
These seats are distributed across various categories including:
- Minority category seats
- Self-financed seats
- NRI category seats
Formal Implementation and Ongoing Challenges
Following the court's clear order, the MCC issued a formal notice confirming that the seats have been successfully incorporated into the Round III counselling matrix. The notice explicitly states that candidates can now lock their preferences through the counselling portal, even as the underlying affiliation issue between HIMSR and Jamia Hamdard University remains unresolved.
This case once again highlights the recurring friction between regulatory approvals, university affiliations, and counselling timelines in India's medical education system. The judicial intervention underscores how courts are increasingly stepping in to protect student interests when administrative processes threaten to derail an entire academic session, ensuring that aspiring doctors do not become collateral damage in bureaucratic delays.
The immediate availability of these seats provides a crucial opportunity for postgraduate medical aspirants who might otherwise have missed out on admission this academic year. As the counselling process moves forward, candidates across India now have additional options to consider in their pursuit of specialized medical education.
