PU students move SC for putting off NEET to 2014

A group of pre-university course (PUC) students from Karnataka on Wednesday urged the Supreme Court not to allow the Medical Council of India (MCI) to conduct National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET) from this year for admission to MBBS and BDS courses

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The petitioners, pursuing their PUC II year, contended that they had not studied the syllabus prescribed by the CBSE which was 30 to 35 per cent more than the one prescribed by their state board.

Appearing for the students, advocate G S Kannur submitted before a three-judge bench presided over by Chief Justice Altamas Kabir that the MCI and the Karnataka government had taken a unilateral and arbitrary decision to conduct NEET examination in 2013. They had been deferring the decision since 2010 to avoid discrimination and hardship to the students studying the state board syllabus.

He argued that If the MCI went ahead with the NEET, the petitioners would suffer and not be able to secure seats in government medical colleges. “As they are already in the final term, neither can the colleges teach CBSE syllabus in a few months time nor could the students cover the vast syllabus,” he said.

“The petitioners are not against the NEET examination but are only requesting that it should be held from the year 2014 as the students would be fully prepared by then,” he said. 

The Centre had come up with the idea of a common syllabus in 2008 for the 32 educational boards in the country and had given timeframe for the states to adopt it. However, Karnataka was far behind in adopting the common science syllabus, Kannur said.

In a writ petition, the students urged the court to quash the notification issued by MCI on February 15 last year and restrain the CBSE from conducting the NEET for admission to first year MBBS for the academic year 2013-2014 in Karnataka as it is violative of Article 14 of the Constitution.

The NEET examination has been proposed for admission to undergraduate and postgraduate courses in all medical and dental colleges.

The MCI had earlier moved the Supreme Court seeking direction to transfer the petitions filed in different High Courts challenging the NEET.

The apex court, which had allowed the plea in October last, is at the moment hearing the challenge to the NEET filed by different unaided medical colleges as well as religious and linguistic minority institutions.