Chennai: Allied healthcare aspirants — from prospective physiotherapists and optometrists to lab and imaging technologists — are scrambling to decode a maze of eligibility rules, as course-wise criteria under the National Commission for Allied and Healthcare Professions are scattered across multiple documents and sometimes seem to contradict one another.
"There is no single, authoritative reference that gives students information — course by course," said private tutor Ilavarasi S, who was a former principal of an aided school in the city. "Students must know which Class 12 subjects are required for a course, whether 'biology' includes two papers (botany and zoology) or biotechnology. There is no clarity on minimum marks requirement or category-based relaxation," she said. Many teachers, parents and students have raised similar concerns.
For some popular UG courses, biology is listed as the key eligibility subject, but the wording is not uniform. In degrees such as Bachelor of Medical Laboratory Science and Emergency Medical Technology, the requirement is physics, chemistry and biology (botany + zoology), while for B Optometry the recommendation is 10+2 with physics, chemistry and biology or mathematics, and 50% marks. The B Opt programme does not spell out whether ‘botany and zoology or biotechnology' count as biology. Officials in many colleges – government and private – are confused too.
"The routes for admissions are different for different courses. Candidates with negative scores could technically secure a seat so long as they do not displace higher-ranked applicants or breach reservation rules," said a senior official at a government college.
The thresholds are just as uneven. Some programmes fix the minimum at 50%, others offer lower cut-offs for students from reserved categories or those with disabilities, and a few require only pass mark in the relevant subject. "I thought courses grouped under an allied and healthcare umbrella shared common rules. This means I can have two or three options while I file an application. Now I find some fall short on a subject combination or a 50% mark," said S Manju, who passed her Class 12.
