MUMBAI, Oct. 20 -- Around 35% of postgraduate (PG) seats in private and minority medical colleges, which were earlier largely available to students from Maharashtra, will now be open to candidates from across India and abroad. The newly notified rules for these institutional quota seats, as stated by the Maharashtra State Common Entrance Test (CET) Cell in its admission brochure for 2026-27 on Monday, have upset students aspiring to secure admission to the MD and MS courses. According to the new rules, all seats under the institutional and NRI quotas will now be filled through a centralised Maharashtra State NEET PG online 2026 counselling process. The entire procedure will be managed by the Maharashtra CET Cell, ensuring that individual private colleges do not hold separate offline rounds at their campus levels. What has upset students and parents is that under the new guidelines, the eligibility for the institutional quota has changed. Aspirants who hold a Maharashtra domicile certificate can now apply for institutional seats even if they graduated from a university outside the state. Moreover, candidates coming from other states, as well as foreign medical graduates, are also permitted to register for institute-level vacant quota seats in private medical institutions. Earlier, students who had completed their MBBS from colleges in Maharashtra had an advantage under the existing admission practice. "The new rules are unfair because other states do not allow such an opportunity to Maharashtra candidates. We already have limited seats, and this decision will make it more difficult for our students to secure admission," said Sudha Shenoy, a medical admission counsellor. Shenoy said that students and parents would approach the CET Cell, and also planned to meet medical education minister Hasan Mushrif to seek a review of the decision. A CET Cell official said that the state could not reserve all institutional quota seats for Maharashtra students because of court orders. "Last year, 10-12 candidates from outside Maharashtra had filed a petition and were subsequently allowed admission under the institutional quota," he said. To this, Shenoy said that the CET Cell should share the court order on which the decision was based, adding that students would consider challenging it if required. The state has also ended offline, campus-level admissions for postgraduate medical and dental courses from the academic year 2026-27. All seats, including management, institutional and NRI quota seats, will now be filled through centralised online counselling. Parents said they were ready to approach the court to protect the interests of Maharashtra students. The CET Cell has formed a task force to monitor social media posts spreading false or misleading information about entrance examinations, results and admission processes. The task force can recommend legal action against accounts publishing such claims on platforms including X, Facebook, YouTube and WhatsApp. The cell has already issued a legal notice to a YouTube channel for publishing an unannounced schedule for MHT-CET 2027, including registration and result dates, which caused confusion among students. The cell has also asked students and parents to report misleading posts, videos and claims about changing examination centres or increasing percentile scores....