The Supreme Court on Friday has dismissed the plea seeking a special stray round to fill up 1,456 vacant seats in NEET PG 2021.

The Supreme Court of India said that granting a stray round of counselling for NEET PG 2021 vacant seats will affect public health.”

The Apex Court had reserved its order on Thursday on a plea seeking a Special Stray Round of counselling for NEET-PG 2021, to allow the candidates to participate for vacant seats available, after conducting a vacant stray round of All India Quota.

A Bench comprising Justice M.R. Shah and Justice Aniruddha Bose passed the order on a petition filed by the doctors, who appeared in NEET-PG 2021 and participated in rounds 1 and 2 of All India Quota (AIQ) Counselling and State Quota Counselling, which was followed by All India Mop-Up and State Mop-Up Rounds.

The Bench assured to consider the submissions made by both sides and said it will pass a detailed order on friday.

The top court of country had on Wednesday flayed the Medical Counselling Committee for leaving 1456 seats in NEET-PG vacant, stating that it not only created problems for the aspirants, but also lead to a dearth of qualified doctors.

The Supreme Court, while permitting the government to file an affidavit during the course of the day, directed it to explain the position of vacant seats and the reason why they were not filled.

The government further said that the counselling process for two academic sessions which is 2021 and 2022, could not run concurrently.

In a fresh affidavit today, the Centre submitted that the vacant seats were mostly non-clinical, meaning that they did not produce doctors, but teachers and hence, students usually did not opt for these seats.

Appearing for the Centre, ASG Balbir Singh submitted that this was an annual phenomena, seats in these areas were the ones, where no one applied. In 2021, out of the said 1,456 vacant seats, around 800 to 900 were opted for, but the students did not take admission. As result of this, the seats again became vacant, noted the ASG.

Later in the day, the Central government submitted an affidavit before the Apex Court, stating that the software being used for conducting NEET-PG 2021 online counselling was now closed and hence, it could not possibly fill 1,456 vacant vacant seats by conducting a Special Stray Round of counselling.

The Counsel for National Medical Council informed the Court that counseling for NEET-PG 2021 was closed after nine rounds.

It said that after four rounds of St counselling, four rounds of AIQ counselling and another round was conducted for AIQ round. After nine rounds, the counselling was closed.

As per the Counsel, this was an annual situation, which came every year and which was considered in 2019 also in the Educational Promotion Society vs Union of India,” he submitted.

Those who qualified for NEET-PG 2021, have already started taking classes in February, noted the ASG, stating that if the seats were filled now, it will have a detrimental effect on the new dtudents, as they would lag by six to eight months.

Counsel for the doctors, Senior Advocate Rachna Srivastava, said that the counselling was stopped abruptly on May 7 and as per the RTI reply, a large number of seats pertaining to a certain branch of surgery, anaesthesia and ophthalmology, were available,

However, the Bench observed that there must be a limit to the entire process and if the seats remained vacant even after nine rounds of counselling, then the students cannot claim rights after 1.5 years.

A petition has been filed in the Supreme Court by The All India Medical Students Association to postpone the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test for Postgraduate (NEET-PG) 2022 exam scheduled on May 21 for the reason that it was clashing with the NEET PG 2021 counselling which is currently going on.

Advocate Sandeep Tiwari, the lawyer of AIMSA, said on Twitter: “On behalf of All India Medical Students Association (AIMSA) we have moved Supreme Court of India against scheduled examination of NEET-PG 2022 dated 21st May, 2022.

The aspirants for the exams have raised the issue as the clashing of dates in ongoing counselling for NEET-PG 2021 with the new exam which may have lead to another set of problems later.

Social media is currently flooded with the many campaign  by medical students who want that the NEET-PG 2022 are postponed.

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Citing delay in the process of counselling for NEET PG 2021,many associations have already sent letter to the President, Prime Minister and Health Minister in this regard.

The Supreme Court had on a previous occasion dismissed a plea to extend the internship deadline for the NEET PG 2022 students beyond July 31,on the pretext of disrupting the academic schedule.

The students had informed the court that many of them were unable to complete their internship due to the covid -19 duties.

Several ssociations have written to President Ram NNath Kovind, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Health Minister Mansukh Mandaviya to postpone the NEET PG exams 2022 citing delay in the counselling process

Last month, the Supreme Court had dismissed a plea to extend the internship deadline of July 31 for NEET-PG 2022 saying that it will disrupt the academic schedule.

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Many students sought for extension of the internship deadline saying that they could not perform internship as they were called to engage in in the COVID-19 duties.

The original deadline of March 31 was extended to July 31 by the Centre following an earlier direction by the Court to consider

The Supreme Court today has cancelled the All India Quota Mop-Up Round Counselling for NEET-PG 2021-2022 admissions due to the anomalies arising from the 146 seats that were added to the Mop Up Round which were not available to AIQ candidates in Rounds 1 and 2.

The bench of Justices DY Chandrachud, Justice Surya Kant and Justice Bela M Trivedi directed holding a special round of counselling for the 146 seats, along with allowing students who have joined the All India or the State Quota in Round 2 to participate in this round as well.

The concern authorities are instructed to invite options from students within 24 hours of issuing the fresh notification and complete the process within 72 hours after the cut-off time for giving options.

The authorities are directed to hold a mop up round, and complete the process within 72 hours.

The Court has also upheld the March 16 advisory which prevents students who have taken seats in State Quota after Round 2 from participating in the Mop-Up.

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The bench of Justices DY Chandrachud, Surya Kant and Bela M Trivedi passed the following directions:

• Counselling for the All India Quota Mop Up Round shall stand cancelled.
• For the additional 146 seats which became available after the AIQ Round 2 on 16 March 2022, a Fresh Mop-up round of counselling shall be conducted as a special case.
• Students with who had
• Students with state quota or AIQ who joined in Round 2, will be at liberty to participate in the fresh round of counselling without any financial penalties.
• A new Mop UP Round for AIQ seats will be conducted and completed with 14 days thereafter
• Those students who have joined in round 2 of State Quota shall not be eligible to participate in the mop-up round for either state or All India Quota

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The Court clarified that the directions have been issued invoking powers under Article 142 of the Constitution to resolve the imbroglio. This means, the directions will have no effect of a precedent.

The Supreme Court issued a notice in a plea filed by a doctor against the National Board of Examination seeking the release of the question paper and answer key of the candidates for NEET PG 2021 in order to reevaluate/re-check in case of any discrepancy in the scores.

A Bench comprising Justice D.Y. Chandrachud and Justice Surya Kant heard the matter. 

AOR Kaustubh Shukla appeared on behalf of the doctor. 

There are other Writ petitions filed in the Apex court against the National Board of Examination seeking the same relief as the petitioner. 

Petitioner Sushant challenged a serious instance of discrepancies in his score for NEET PG. the petitioner highlighted that there are thousands of other candidates across the country facing similar issues with their score of NEET PG.

It is submitted that the NBE by not releasing the answer sheets is in gross violation of the landmark judgment CBSE & Anr v Aditya Bandopadhyay & Ors. wherein it was held that an answer sheet is information under Section 2(f) of the RTI Act and therefore, students have a fundamental and legal right of having access to their answer sheets under the RTI Act. 

The petitioner submitted that clause 9.7 and clause 10.4 of the NEET PG Information bulletin is unconstitutional and deprives the petitioner of their fundamental right to know. 

“Clause 9.7 NEET-PG is a proprietary examination and is conducted only by NBE. The contents of this exam are confidential, proprietary and are owned by NBE. NBE explicitly prohibits the candidate, from reproducing, transmitting or publishing any or some contents of this exam, in whole or in part, in any form or by any means verbal or written, electronic or mechanical for any purpose whatsoever. NBE shall not entertain any request for sharing any content of the examination including answer keys/ answer sheets.”

Further, as per Clause 10.4, NBE is depriving the candidates of revaluation/re-totalling/re-checking of responses filled by them. It states as, Clause 10.4 There shall be no revaluation of rechecking or re-totalling of marked by the candidates. Requests/ Queries for revaluation/ re-totaling shall not be entertained.

The petition also prays to

• Declare the Clause 9.7 and 10.4 of NEET PG information bulletin 2021 as unconstitutional
• Direct the establishment of a high-powered committee to examine instances of alleged discrepancy raised by thousands of candidates across the country in order to ensure fairness and transparency in the evaluation mechanism
• Direct NBE to upload individual OMR sheets in login account along with question paper and corresponding answer sheet of the candidates of NEET PG-2021
• Direct NBE to allow

The Supreme Court on Tuesday refused to interfere with the matter concerning the NEET PG 2022 session, stating that it was a ‘policy decision,’ which should be taken by the Centre.

A Bench comprising Justice D.Y. Chandrachud, Justice Surya Kant and Justice Vikram Nath told the candidates to place their point of view with the Central government regarding the extension of deadline for the completion of internship on May 31, 2022.

The top court passed the order on a bunch of petitions regarding NEET PG 2022. Candidates who have passed PG course through NEET have sought extension of the deadline for completion of internship to May 31.

The candidates said they were on Covid-19 duty in 2021. Their internship has been delayed due to Covid duty, which was a crucial factor to appear in the NEET PG 2022 exam.

The Bench observed that one of the grounds on which the petition under Article 32 was moved was that there was a likely clash between the schedule for counselling for NEET PG 2021-2022 and the NEET PG examination for the ensuing academic year, which has been resolved with the postponement of the NEET PG examination.

On January 7, 2021, the Apex Court Bench of Justice D.Y. Chandrachud and Justice A.S. Bopanna had allowed the resumption of counselling for NEET PG and UG courses for 2021-2022 by upholding the constitutional validity of the 27 per cent reservation for Other Backward Class and 10 per cent quota for the Economically Weaker Section as laid down in 2019 with the Rs 8 lakh annual income criteria.

Justice Chandrachud said, “We have upheld the validity of OBC. In EWS, we’ve upheld the criteria for this year so that the admissions are not dislocated for the current academic year. We will hear the petition with respect to to the EWS criteria later.”

He said the court accepted the Pandey Committee report. The counselling for NEET PG and UG will take place in consonance with the notification as given effect, Justice Chandrachud added.

Now, the Apex Court would specifically examine the feasibility of having Rs 8 lakh as a cap to avail the EWS quota for PG medical admissions as laid down by the Pandey Committee. The court said it would examine the rationale of Rs 8 lakh income criteria for EWS category in March-April 2022.

On January 6, Justice Chandrachud had remarked that the Court had been hearing this matter for two days, and said the Counselling should start in national interest.

The Apex Court heard the arguments of the petitioners represented by Senior Advocates Arvind Datar, Shyam Divan and P. Wilson.

Taking in view the difficulties many students will face due to clashing of date of counselling for NEET PG 2021 with the National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test Post Graduate Exam 2022, the Central government on Friday postponed the NEET PG 2022 by six to eight weeks.

A letter made public by the Directorate General of Health Sciences stated that it directed the National Board of Examinations (NBE) to postpone NEET PG 2022, taking in view the various representations received by the government, highlighting the difficulties faced by many students in taking the exam since it would be clashing with the date of counselling for NEET PG 2021.

In a letter made public by DGHS, officials have highlighted how this request stems from the various requests received by the government for postponement of the exam. “Lot of representations are being received from medical doctors regarding request to delay NEET-PG 2022 examination date of March 12 since it is clashing with the NEET-PG 2021 counseling. Also, many of the interns will not be able to participate in PG counseling 2022 by month of May/June 2022,” states the letter.

The Supreme Court is slated to hear a petition seeking postponement of the exam.

The plea by NEET PG candidates has cited these very reasons to seek deferment of the exam.

The Supreme Court has issued notice to the National Board of Examinations in a plea filed by doctors seeking release of the NEET-PG 2021, answer key and the question paper and also to provide for revaluation option in case of discrepancy.

A Supreme Court bench of Justice DY Chandrachud and Justice BV Nagarathna observed that the reason behind not releasing the answer sheet and the question paper is to protect the sanctity of the exam.

It was further observed that if the key answers are uploaded there is a possibility that a debate may arise at a later stage regarding the correctness of the answers. The bench however issued a notice commenting that the bench needs to hear the National Board of Examination first on this issue before granting any relief or direction.

Senior Advocate Gopal Sankaranarayanan appearing on behalf of the petitioners submitted that except the NEET-PG is the only exam where answer sheet and question paper post examination are not shared. There has to be some transparency in the process to ensure that the method for revaluation is indeed fair.

Justice Chandrachud explained that ideally NEET-PG may have a limited question bank and the department is possibly refraining from such exercise so that the independent coaching centre does not take undue benefit of this.

The petition states that the challenge pertains to serious instances of discrepancies in their scores for NEET-PG 2021 and to bring notice of the Apex Court that grave and serious problem is faced by thousands of aspirants across the country due to arbitrary action on part of the National Board of Examination in not releasing the answer key and the question paper for NEET-PG.

Another issue raised by the petition doctors is that the NBE is not providing the candidates with an option to revaluate or recheck in case of discrepancy in their scores.

The Petition further seeks to declare clause 9.7 and 10.4 of the NEET-PG Information Bulletin, 2021 as unconstitutional, and to direct formation of a high-powered committee to examine the present situation. 

The petition is filed by AOR Dr Charu Mathur.

Case Title:  MANJUNATH B TADASAD Versus NATIONAL BOARD OF EXAMINATION