Hi. The category rank is useful for a number of reasons. There is usually a defined number of seats across all the medical and dental colleges in India and these seats are further divided into various categories (General, SC, ST, EWS, OBC etc). Only a candidate belonging to a particular category can avail that seat, i.e an SC candidate can not take the seat of an ST category. This holds true for all seats except for General or Unreserved seats, which are open to everyone based on the merit.

Now, the category rank is given alongside the all india rank to simplify and streamline the counselling procedure to ensure everyone gets a seat according to their merit.