The education department has appealed to the 50,000 students of medical stream for filling the vacant seats in the engineering colleges, but is yet to get any positive response. Gujarat education department, after scrapping the semester system, appealed to the medical students who have successfully cleared the class XII exam to opt for the engineering courses in March 2016. The education department wanted to fill the vacancies in engineering colleges and urged the 50,000 medical stream students to join, but unfortunately could not get any positive response. The state government took the decision in order to resolve the issue of filling thousands of seats which are going vacant every year in the private engineering colleges which incurred huge losses every year.
Nearly 50,000 medical stream students have cleared the mathematics examination but only 290 students registered after the appeal of the government. Even out of 290 students, only 187 appeared for the examination. Only 19 students have cleared the examination, which is highly embarrassing. Such results were never expected, as stated by a senior GSHSEB official. Most of the students felt that they required more time to prepare for the two-year curriculum of mathematics subject.
The scheme announced by the government was to benefit most of the medical students who have limited options, in case they fail to get admission for medical. GSHSEB deputy director, R R Thakkar, added that the Board has not analysed the problem and even the data is not available to know about how many students appeared and have passed the examination to get admission in the engineering institutes.