Kaloji Narayana Rao University of Health Sciences published the final merit list for MBBS and BDS admissions under the Competent Authority Quota on 28 August 2026, and opened web options the next morning. 18,600 candidates are on the list. The seat matrix released alongside it carries 6,413 competent authority MBBS seats across 63 colleges. Options close at 12 noon on 1 September at tsmedadm.tsche.in.
The rule that decides your whole counselling
KNRUHS has put two bars in this notification, both aimed at seat blocking, and either one can end your counselling in Telangana.
The first: if you do not exercise web options in this first phase, you cannot exercise them in any later phase. Sitting out phase 1 to wait for a better round is not an option this year. If your name is on the final merit list and you want a Telangana competent authority seat at all, you enter options before Monday noon.
The second: if you are allotted a seat and do not join that college, you cannot exercise options in later rounds. The same applies if you are allotted a seat and then fail to complete admission by the joining date printed on the allotment order. So a casual option list is expensive. Every college you enter is one you are agreeing to join.
There is no limit on how many colleges you can list. That cuts both ways. List every college you would genuinely accept, and leave out the ones you would walk away from.
Dates and fees
| Step | When |
|---|---|
| Final merit list published | 28 August 2026 |
| Web options open | 6.00 am on 29 August 2026 |
| Web options close | 12.00 noon on 1 September 2026 |
Allotted candidates pay a university fee of ₹12,000 for MBBS online by card or net banking, then download the allotment order. That fee is not refunded under any circumstances. If a payment fails and you end up paying twice, the duplicate comes back only after admissions close, and only against a request sent to knruhs.doublepayments@gmail.com.
Tuition is paid at the college itself, not to the university. For government colleges it is what the college notifies on its own website. For private colleges it is set by G.O.Ms.No. 98, HM&FW (C1) Department, dated 7 August 2026.
What the 6,413 seats look like
The competent authority quota covers government seats left after the 15 per cent all-India quota, plus half the seats in each affiliated private college. Split by ownership, using the university’s own college list:
| Colleges | Number | Competent authority MBBS seats |
|---|---|---|
| Government | 36 | 3,723 |
| Private, including minority and women-only | 27 | 2,690 |
| Total | 63 | 6,413 |
The matrix is published in five parts. The main non-minority table holds 5,745 seats, of which 287 are PwD, 57 CAP, 14 PMC and 7 SCCL. Raja Rajeshwari Medical College for Women adds 75 non-minority seats open to women only. An EWS table adds 203 seats, and these sit in just seven government colleges: Gandhi, Kakatiya, Mahabubnagar, Siddipet, Nizamabad, Adilabad and ESIC.
The minority tables hold 330 seats across Deccan, Shadan and Ayaan, and another 60 at Dr. V.R.K. Women’s Medical College. Competent authority seats in minority colleges go to Muslim minority candidates only. Those candidates stay eligible for competent authority seats everywhere else, so a minority tag adds options rather than restricting them.
One thing the matrix does not tell you: management and NRI seats in the private colleges are filled separately and are not in this document. Neither are BDS seats, although the merit list you are on covers both courses.
Who made the final list
The university’s July information list showed 38,021 NEET-qualified candidates from Telangana. Registration and certificate verification were separate steps after that, and 18,600 came through them onto this merit list. That is roughly 2.9 names for every competent authority MBBS seat, before BDS candidates and BDS seats are counted.
The list carries the NEET all-India rank rather than a state rank, so you can read it straight against national numbers. The best rank on it is AIR 83, with a score of 693. Telangana’s top qualifier in July stood at AIR 13, a reminder that the state’s highest scorers often take an all-India seat instead.
By category: OC 3,501, BC-B 2,766, BC-E 2,633, BC-D 2,414, BC-A 1,272 and BC-C 264; SC-2 2,077, SC-3 1,512 and SC-1 118; ST 2,043. Another 1,169 candidates carry the EWS flag and 3,401 the Muslim minority flag. 13,633 of the 18,600 are women, just under 73 per cent of the list.
Forty-four candidates can apply for only one course
Forty-four names carry a remark under G.O.Ms.No. 125, HM&FW (C1) Department, dated 22 September 2022. Thirty-six are barred from BDS because they did not join a BDS seat allotted to them in 2024-25 or 2025-26, and eight are barred from MBBS for the same reason on an MBBS seat. Each is marked on the list as eligible for the other course only.
That penalty is the older and harder version of the seat-blocking rule now applied within this year’s counselling. It is worth reading before you decide to enter a college you are not serious about.
What to do before Monday noon
Check your name, category, EWS status and minority status on the final merit list first. Category is confirmed only after the welfare department verifies your certificate, and a wrong tag here changes which seats you compete for.
Then build your option list in the order you actually want, not the order you think you can get. Allotment works down your list, so a college placed above one you prefer will be given to you if your rank reaches it. Take a printout of your saved options, and expect a six-letter one-time password on your registered mobile while you enter them.
Helplines run 10.30 am to 5.00 pm on working days: 7901098840 and 9490585796 for rules, 9392685856, 9059672216 and 7842136688 for technical trouble, 9618240276 for payment issues, and 9866092370 for certificate verification.
Before you fix the order, check where your rank has landed in earlier years. Our Telangana cutoff pages carry closing ranks by college, category and seat type, the Telangana college pages cover fees and seats college by college, and the predictor shows which seats your rank reaches. We wrote about the qualified list that this merit list came out of in Telangana NEET UG 2026 qualified candidates list out.
Source: KNRUHS notification for exercising web options for the first phase of counselling, MBBS admissions under Competent Authority Quota for AY 2026-27, dated 28.08.2026; the accompanying MBBS competent authority seat matrix; and the final merit list for MBBS/BDS admissions under Competent Authority Quota for AY 2026-27, dated 28.08.2026. Seat and candidate counts are our own totals from those documents, cross-checked against the NMC MBBS seat matrix for 2026-27.