Apex Court issues notice to Centre, MCI

The Supreme Court on Tuesday issued notice to the Centre and others on a plea challenging the May 24 ordinance allowing states to conduct their own  entrance tests for medical courses for 2016-17 academic year.

A bench of Justices Kurian Joseph and Shiva Kirti Singh sought response also from the Medical Council of India, Dental Council of India, CBSE and the Karnataka government on the petitions filed by a batch of students from Bengaluru– A Archana, Safeena Tabassum Mahammed, Nabeela Hasan and others.

The court, however, refused to pass an interim direction to the CBSE to publish separate merit lists for CBSE students and their counterparts in state boards in the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET ) held in two phases for undergraduate medical and dental courses in colleges all over the country.

The petitioners, represented by senior advocate Sanjay Hegde, contended that the ordinance issued by the Centre denied them the opportunity to take NEET for admission to state government colleges.

Contending that the ordinance is “bad in law, discriminatory and punitive”, the petitioners claimed mandating admission purely on merit violated “the Certificate of Essentiality”, which was the very basis of pre-condition for establishment of medical colleges in Karnataka.

The NEET, based on the CBSE pattern and being conducted in English, caused unfair and unforseen disadvantage to the students from the state board, they submitted.

The petitioners claimed that they were not challenging the validity of NEET but only wanted the ordinance to be read down so that private institutions were also exempted from the single entrance test during the academic year 2016-17.

They also raised the plight of students from Tamil Nadu and Puducherry, where there was no practice of common entrance test and such candidates were forced to take NEET.

Following the ordinance, the students seeking admission in government medical college and government seats in the private medical colleges do not have to take NEET, yet those admitted to the seats meant exclusively for management category have to undertake a tough entrance test to secure a seat, they submitted.