Supreme Court to consider plea for special stray round of counselling to fill up PG medical seats

The Supreme Court on Monday decided to examine a plea by medical students seeking a special stray round of counselling to fill vacant postgraduate medical seats under the All-India Quota (AIQ) in the NEET 2021.

A vacation bench of Justices M R Shah and Aniruddha Bose asked the advocate representing the seven candidates led by Dr Astha Goel to serve a copy of the petition to Medical Counselling Committee (MCC), National Board of Examination, and the Centre.

The court fixed the matter for hearing on June 8.

The petitioners have sought a direction to MCC to conduct a special stray round of counselling to allow the candidates to participate for the vacant seats, available after the conduct of the stray vacancy round of AIQ. The petitioners also sought a direction to MCC to provide the exact number of vacant seats after the conduct of the stray vacancy round of AIQ.

The plea, filed through advocate Milind Kumar, said following a reply to an RTI on May 11, the petitioners were informed that some seats are still vacant and that the information regarding the same runs into 101 pages.

"This ignited a ray of hope in the petitioners as they were still without a seat and that these vacant seats would provide a fair chance to all the candidates placed similarly as the petitioners," their plea said.

It also contended that the petitioners made umpteen efforts to contact the appropriate authorities by emails to obtain information regarding the vacant seats but received no response.

The plea said as per the notification released by MCC on April 18, 2022, a special stray round was organised in the UG counselling for the vacant 323 seats in order to make sure that precious seats do not go to waste.

"The MCC has taken steps to ensure that the vacant seats do not go to waste in the UG counselling, they can adopt a similar method with respect to PG counselling. In the interest of justice, this will provide a fair opportunity to everyone who could not secure a seat in the previous rounds of counselling and also be advantageous to the colleges as it will generate revenue for them," it added.

The NEET-PG 2021-22 was conducted on September 11, 2021 and the result was announced on September 28, 2021.