SC reserves order on pleas for extra rounds to fill up vacant seats under NEET PG-2021

The Supreme Court on Thursday reserved its order on pleas seeking a special stray round of counselling for NEET-PG 2021, to fill up over 1,400 vacant seats. The court said it will pronounce its order on Friday.

As the Centre's counsel submitted most of these seats are of non-clinical subjects and remained vacant after eight to nine rounds of counselling, a bench of Justices M R Shah and Aniruddha Bose agreed that there should be a limit for every exercise and admissions made after 1.5 years might compromise medical education and health of the people.

The court also said students cannot claim rights after 1.5 years.

Also noting that it is a three-year course, the bench said, “There cannot be any compromise with education. Suppose, you're hungry for six months, can you eat everything in one day? No, education is like that”.

Additional Solicitor General Balbir Singh and advocate Gaurav Sharma, appearing for the Centre and the National Medical Commission respectively, submitted that those who qualified NEET PG-2021 have already started attending classes since February, and if vacant seats are filled up now then they would be behind the class for over six months. They also said NEET PG-2022 admissions are scheduled to start next month.

The Centre’s counsel clarified that out of 1,456 vacant seats, majority are in non-clinical or meant for teaching, and nobody wanted to go for those streams.

Further, around 1,100 seats are in private colleges and they are far more expensive, they added.

Sharma said the counselling for NEET-PG 2021 was closed after nine rounds of counselling, including four rounds of state counselling, and four rounds of AIQ (All India Quota). The counsel also pointed out this scenario is seen almost every year as some non-clinical seats remained vacant.

On Wednesday, hearing a batch of petitions for conducting another round of counselling, the top court had pulled up the Centre and the Medical Counselling Committee (MCC) for allowing 1,456 vacant seats, saying they were playing with the lives of students, despite dearth of doctors in the country.

The court also warned if students are not given admission, then it will pass orders and also grant them compensation.