Cuttack, July 18: The Odisha government is facing problems to fill up seats earmarked for in-service doctors for admission to PG (medical) courses in the three government medical colleges of the state due to dearth of eligible candidates.

The state government filed a 14-page affidavit on the eligibility of in-service candidates for 2013 in Orissa High Court yesterday. The affidavit said the government had decided to reduce the eligibility from five years to three years “as the in-service doctors who have a minimum five years service were not sufficiently available and even if they were available, they did not qualify the entrance examination”.

“Since 2005, all seats earmarked for the in-service category are not being filled up because the doctors are not qualifying. For this, near about 50 per cent of in-service category vacant seats are given to directly-qualified candidates,” Dr Jayanta Kumar Dash, convener of PG (medical) selection committee, 2013, said in the affidavit.

Of the 343 seats for postgraduate courses in the three state government medical colleges, 87 are earmarked for in-service candidates and 86 for direct candidates under the state quota. The rest are allocated for the all-India quota.

Dash filed the affidavit on behalf of the state government, director of medical education and training and Medical Council of India as a counter to petitions challenging the May 27, 2013, notification reducing from five years to three years the eligibility period of service for in-service candidates.

The high court today closed hearing and reserved judgment on the batch of eight petitions seeking quashing of the notification which the health and family welfare department issued on May 27, 2013. On June 12, the court had issued an interim stay order on the notification.

The notification said: “Any candidate having completed three years’ continuous service and considered eligible by the selection committee will be allowed for admission to PG courses as an in-service candidate. Candidate having less than three years continuous service will be treated as direct candidate.”

The counter affidavit said: “This decision of the state government has been made as a policy decision by taking into consideration the interests of the state.”

The state government wanted to give opportunity to more in-service doctors to acquire PG qualification to enable them to provide better service to the people of Odisha as specialists in those disciplines.

But this was “not fulfilled as doctors with five years’ experience were not able to qualify in the entrance test for which those vacant seats were given to the direct candidates on whom the state government has no control”.