NEET SS 2021 : Supreme Court Dismisses MD/MS Doctors Plea Seeking Reduction Of Eligibility Cut Off

The Supreme Court on Wednesday dismissed a writ preferred by MD/MS Doctors seeking a reduction of eligibility cut off for qualifying for registering and appearing for the Mop-Up/Stray Vacancy round being organized by the Medical Counseling Committee ("MCC") for NEET SS 2021.The Court had earlier dismissed a similar plea by a University.The bench of Justices DY Chandrachud, Surya Kant and PS Narasimha while refusing to interfere in the writ orally observed, "These are Super Speciality Courses. We have to follow consistency also. We had heard the matter at length. We'll not reopen our final judgement now. It was all over the newspaper & everywhere it was reported that we have dismissed the matter."In the hearing today, Senior Advocate Jayant Bhushan commenced his submissions by contending that Percentile was different from percentage as percentile determined inter se merit and not merit per se.Contending that percentile does not determine absolute merit, Bhushan said inter se merit will be there when you have less seats. He further added that, "In the past 3 years they lowered the percentile in 2018, 2019 & 2020. The rationale was that otherwise it'll be a waste & seats will go vacant. It is for them to explain as to why seats going waste was relevant for 3 years in a row and not for this year."The bench referred to its order dated May 9 wherein it had dismissed another plea which was filed by NIMS university seeking a reduction in percentile for NEET SS 2021, the bench said. It was argued in the petition that the Union had consistently reduced the eligibility criteria in the past to ensure that a large number of seats don't go waste and that the doctors had a similar legitimate expecetation for this year also. MD/MS doctors had further contended that due to COVID and other circumstances, the session was already running late and the next NEET exam was expected to take place soon and therefore there was high probability that many seats would remain vacant leading to national wastage. Against this backdrop along with seeking reduction of the eligibility cut-off in NEET SS 21 from 50th percentile to the least possible percentile in line with similar reductions in the previous 3 years, doctors had also sought relief for permitting them to sit for the mop-up/stray vacancy counseling rounds. The petition was drawn by Advocate Karanjot Singh Mainee and filed through AOR Satya Mitra. Case Title: Dr. Vignesh Parivallal And Ors. Versus Union Of India & Others| Diary Number 15525/2022Click Here To Read/Download Order

NEET SS 2021 : Supreme Court Dismisses MD/MS Doctors Plea Seeking Reduction Of Eligibility Cut Off

Shruti Kakkar

Tags