Mumbai, Nov. 27 -- Medical aspirants who want to study Ayurveda, Yoga and Naturopathy, Unani, Siddha, and Homeopathy (AYUSH) in Maharashtra will have a fresh chance to select their preferred colleges as the State Common Entrance Test (CET) cell has announced a special Centralised Admission Process (CAP) round, called round four, for AYUSH courses. A circular to this effect was issued by the CET cell on Wednesday. This will be the first time that an additional CAP round will be held for AYUSH courses, which are placed under group B in the admission process, while group A includes MBBS and BDS courses. The development comes nearly two weeks after the Bombay High Court observed that students with lower marks were getting seats in top government and private AYUSH colleges simply because of a restrictive rule. The court was hearing a student's petition seeking permission to either upgrade their group B allocation or cancel the seat allotted to them in round 3 of CAP. According to the petition, this year, round 3 of CAP for group B aspirants was conducted before completion of round 3 for groups A aspirants. Once seats were allotted for MBBS and BDS courses, many students who had earlier been allotted group B seats in reputed colleges surrendered them and moved to group A programmes. While this created new vacancies in prominent AYUSH colleges, group B aspirants who had been allotted seats during round 3 were barred from entering the stray vacancy round, as per the admission brochure, the petition said. On November 13, the high court took note of the issue and called the situation "unfair". It allowed the petitioner to amend the plea and add more grounds for relief. But before the matter could be heard again, the CET cell issued the notification on Wednesday announcing a fourth CAP round. Advocate Rahul Kamerkar, representing the petitioner, welcomed the decision. "We are happy that the CET cell and the government realised the injustice caused to meritorious students. Less meritorious students were getting government seats only because AYUSH round 3 was held before the MBBS/BDS round 3," he said. The fourth CAP round would rectify this "grave error" and restore fair merit-based allocation, he said, adding, "We hope such situations are avoided in the future without students needing to approach the court."...