Karnataka High Court bins plea on category change after declaration of NEET PG results

Bengaluru: The High Court has ruled that a candidate cannot change his or her category in NEET-UG/PG after the results are declared. 

The court passed the order while dismissing a petition filed by C Anusha, who had appeared in NEET-PG 2025, and the last date for submitting the application was March 7, 2025. 

A three-day window, from March 9 to 11, was given for making corrections in the form.

After the results were declared on August 19, Anusha filed a petition on September 8, seeking a change of category from GM to OBC, stating that she belongs to the Nekar (weaver) community.

She also cited high court judgments to support her claim. 

However, Deputy Solicitor General Shanthi Bhushan, appearing for the National Board of Examinations in Medical Sciences as well as the Medical Counselling Committee, argued that the petitioner had a three-day window to correct her application form if she was of the opinion that she belonged to the OBC category, but she did not make
use of it. 

A division bench of Justices DK Singh and Venkatesh Naik T noted that in the P Lakshmi Gowda case judgment, cited by the petitioner, the high court had specified that the case should not be treated as a precedent.

In the other case (the Bhanusri case), the high court had noted that the request for a change in category was made before the results were declared. 

The bench said that once a candidate fills out his or her form for NEET-UG/PG belonging to a particular category, and if he or she fails to correct the application form during the window given by the National Testing Agency, the candidate would not be entitled to change his or her category after the declaration of the results. 

“Therefore, both the cases relied on by the counsel for the petitioner are distinguishable based on the facts of the present case. We, therefore, find no substance in this writ petition,” the bench said.