New Delhi: The All India Institute of Medical Sciences in New Delhi and five other cities are likely to face acute shortages of junior residents after January 1 because of a delay in online counselling for new entrants, resident doctors said on Thursday.

Members of the AIIMS Resident Doctors Association said they had been informed that "technical issues" had delayed a plan by AIIMS examination authorities to switch this year from personal counselling to online counselling of qualified candidates.

Without counselling and allotment of institutions and courses to fresh batches of candidates, the AIIMS in Delhi, Bhopal, Bhubaneswar, Jodhpur, Raipur and Rishikesh will face shortages when their existing batches of junior residents leave on December 31, the RDA members have said.

Junior residents are MBBS graduates who have qualified the postgraduate entrance exam and allotted the three-year MD or MS courses.

"Residents also make up the backbone of almost all clinical services," said Harjit Singh Bhatti, president of the AIIMS RDA. They assist senior doctors in all hospital departments - from emergency medicine and paediatrics to obstetrics and gynaecology - depending on which academic course they have been allotted.

The results of the postgraduate entrance exam for AIIMS were out on November 18 this year and doctors who qualified expected counselling to have been completed by December 20.

"Those who have been allotted courses sometimes need time to move to the new place," said Vijay Gurjar, a senior resident doctor.

"We've been told there has been a technical issue," said a doctor at AIIMS who requested not to be named.

The doctors said AIIMS Delhi had a batch of around 150 academic junior residents, which means the hospital will be short of 150 residents from January 1 when the existing batch leaves.

Members of the RDA said they had learnt from the examination department that software testing for the online counselling system was underway and the institute would be in a position to "start the process in two or three days".

The counselling process is crucial because it determines the institute and course a junior resident will get depending on the rank in the exam.

"Online counselling was supposed to streamline the process, instead it has just added tensions," Bhatti said.