NEET 2020: SC Issues Notice In Plea Seeking Examination Centres In Gulf Countries

The Supreme Court on Wednesday issued notice in a plea has seeking allocation of Test Centres for NEET in gulf countries or to postpone the examination until the COVID-19 pandemic subsists.

A bench of Justices L.Nageswara Rao, Hemant Gupta & S. Ravindra Bhat took up the petition, filed by Advocate Haris Beeran and Pallavi Pratap on behalf of parents of students who are applicants for the NEET UG 2020 entrance examination and reside in Doha, Qatar, challenges the Kerala High Court judgement which dismissed the plea holding that the Court cannot issue directions to the Medical Council of India and National Testing Agency as they were expert bodies.

It has been submitted in the plea that there are 4000 students registered for NEET-UG from Qatar and the Middle-East, and that there exist procedural difficulties in getting affidavits attested from the Embassy of India in Qatar and sending it to India for filing of the same due to the pandemic.

In wake of the lockdown imposed to contain the virus, students have tries to register themselves for repatriation under the Vande Bharat Mission introduced by the Government of India, however, none of them managed to get seats in the said flights.

"It is primarily because the VBM flights are mainly intended to repatriate the people who are in distress, migrant labourers, people who are in a medical emergency, as also students stranded in various universities abroad."

In light of the above, the Petitioners have sought for directions to the Union of India to either allocation NEET examination centres in Qatar and other Middle East countries, or as an alternative, to postpone the the NEET UG 2020 examination until the situation is normalized.

A plea moved by Abdul Azeez, the General Secretary of Kerala Muslim Culture Centre, for the aforementioned directions, had been dismissed by a Kerala High Court Division Bench of Chief Justice S. Manikumar and Justice Shaji P. Chaly on June 30.

The MCI had submitted to the Bench that overseas test centres were not feasible and that the students could be brought back to the State in accordance with the guidelines which had been prescribed.