MUMBAI, Oct. 11 -- The Maharashtra government is cracking down on students who block seats in post-graduate (PG) medical and dental admissions. Under new rules, candidates who fail to fill seats allotted to them in the final Centralised Admission Process (CAP) round will be barred from seeking admission to PG medical and dental courses in the state for the next two academic years. The move is aimed at curbing the practice of securing seats during the final counselling round but failing to actually fill them, leaving seats vacant and potentially depriving other aspirants of admission opportunities. The government has also scrapped institution-level admission rounds, bringing all admissions, including those under the institutional and Non-Resident Indian (NRI) quotas, under the State Common Entrance Test Cell's online CAP system. This is a major setback for private colleges accused of unethical admission practices, including arbitrary fee demands and deviations from merit-based admissions. The changes have been notified under the Maharashtra Professional Educational Institutions (Regulation of Admission to the First Year of the Full-Time Professional Postgraduate Medical and Dental Courses) Rules, 2026, through a notification dated October 5. Under the revised rules, candidates must submit a fresh preference form for each round. Their choices become final for that round after verification. Candidates wishing to retain an allotted seat can submit a Status Retention Form, but doing so will make them ineligible to participate in subsequent admission rounds during that academic year. The government has also made it mandatory for all post-graduate medical and dental admissions to be conducted through the online CAP system, including stray vacancy and subsequent stray vacancy rounds. The abolition of institution-level rounds brings institutional and NRI quota seats within the centralised admission framework, eliminating separate college-level admission rounds. The institution-level admission mechanism has faced allegations of enabling private colleges to impose arbitrary fees, make last-minute seat allotments and admit candidates in ways that may not strictly adhere to the merit list. State medical education minister Hasan Mushrif said, "With all admissions now being made through the online Centralised Admission Process (CAP), the admission process will be more transparent and merit-based." Maharashtra-domiciled candidates who have completed their qualifying degree outside the state, as well as candidates from outside Maharashtra and foreign medical graduates (FMGs), are now eligible to apply for these seats, subject to the applicable admission criteria. The notification further states that the last date of registration will serve as the cut-off date for determining eligibility. Dheeraj Kumar, medical education secretary, said scrapping institution-level admission rounds was necessary to ensure that admissions were made on merit. "We started bringing the changes in the undergraduate courses, and now it has been done for the postgraduate courses," he said....