The cabinet today instructed the Higher Education Ministry to find ways to absorb the128 top students who failed to gain admission to do medicine at public universities.

Speaking to Bernama, Works Minister and MIC president S Samy Vellu said of these students, four were Indians, of which three made their appeals via his party.

"We submitted three names. These students have the maximum points needed to do medicine but were given other courses but now they will be given a place to do medicine. They are Murali Selvaraju a 5A student, Jeyanthi Gunasegaran and Umadevi Yogaraja, both 4A students," he said.

He said the cabinet also decided that the cut-off mark for students to do medicine at public universities would be a Cumulative Grade Point Average (CGPA) of 4.0.

He said MIC had also submitted two other names of high achievers but they were not given medical seats because their CGPA was below 4.0.

"These two students obtained 3.95 and 3.94 points. However, the cabinet decided that they be allowed to do dentistry. They are Jothi Ramalingam and Rubinderan Muthusamy. They had applied for medicine earlier but were given some other course. Now they will be taken in for dentistry," he added.

Private colleges

The MIC president said he would meet 19 other Indian students, who obtained CGPA of 3.9, tomorrow to explain to them the reasons for their failure to secure medical seats.

"All the 19 students have 3.9 points. MIC will help find private colleges for them to do medicine and we will partially fund their education. If we can't get seats at local private colleges then we will look at medical colleges in Indonesia or Russia for the 19 students," he said.

He said that compared with 2003, there were more Indian students given medical seats at public universities this year.

Last year, only 13 seats were made available for Indian students to study medicine at local public universities compared with 43 seats this time around.

Samy Vellu said Indian students obtained 15 medical seats at Universiti Malaya, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (6), Universiti Putra Malaysia (4), Universiti Malaysia Sarawak (3), Universiti Malaysia Sabah (5) and Universiti Sains Malaysia (10).