NEW DELHI: Acting on the Supreme Court’s directions in a petition filed by affected candidates, the Medical Counselling Committee (MCC) has added 49 postgraduate medical seats of the Hamdard Institute of Medical Sciences and Research (HIMSR) to the Round III seat matrix, enabling students to exercise choices immediately.The admissions will be conducted through centralised All India Quota counselling, making candidates from across states eligible. While the bulk of the seats are located in Delhi, where HIMSR is based, the national counselling process allows applicants from all parts of the country to compete for them.The Supreme Court permitted counselling for the 2025–26 academic year despite the consent of affiliation from Jamia Hamdard Deemed to be University not having been issued, noting that procedural delays should not result in students losing an academic year.The 49 seats span multiple clinical and non-clinical disciplines, including general medicine, general surgery, paediatrics, orthopaedics, obstetrics and gynaecology, anaesthesiology, radiodiagnosis, pathology, pharmacology and microbiology, and are spread across minority, self-financed and NRI categories.Following the court’s order, MCC issued a formal notice confirming that the seats have been incorporated into the Round III counselling matrix and that candidates can now lock their preferences, even as the affiliation issue remains unresolved.The case once again highlights recurring friction between regulatory approvals, university affiliations and counselling timelines, with courts stepping in to protect student interests when administrative processes threaten to derail an academic session.