NEET admissions: Centre to persist with Rs 8-lakh income criteria for EWS qualification

The panel said that in case of admissions to educational institutions, sudden adoption of new criteria would delay the process by several months

The Centre has told the Supreme Court that it has decided to accept the recommendation of a three-member panel to retain the current gross annual family income limit of Rs 8 lakh or less for Economically Weaker Section (EWS).

In an affidavit filed in a matter related to admissions for NEET-PG, the Centre said the panel has recommended that “only those families whose annual income is up to Rs eight lakh would be eligible to get the benefit of EWS reservation”.

“The central government has decided to accept the recommendations of the committee, including the recommendation of applying the new criteria prospectively,” R Subrahmanyam, Secretary, Department of Social Justice and Empowerment said.

On November 30, the government had constituted the member committee, comprising Ajay Bhushan Pandey, former finance secretary, V K Malhotra, member secretary, ICSSR and Sanjeev Sanyal, Principal Economic Adviser to Centre, after the assurance given to the top court, which had earlier stayed the admission process.

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In its report submitted on December 31 to the Centre said, the panel said, “The current gross annual family income limit for EWS of Rs eight lakh or less may be retained. In other words only those families whose annual income is up to Rs eight lakh would be eligible to get the benefit of EWS reservation.”

It said that the definition of 'family' and income would remain the same as those in the office memorandum of January 17, 2019.

The panel recommended, “EWS may, however exclude, irrespective of income, a person whose family has five acres of agricultural land and above. The residential asset criteria may altogether be removed.”

On the issue of applicability of criteria, the panel said that it has deliberated upon the vexed question as to from which year the criteria suggested in the report should be used, adopted and made applicable.

The panel said it found that the existing criteria (the criteria applicable prior to this report) is in use since 2019 and the question of desirability of the existing criteria and a possibility of its being revisited arose only recently in the batch of petitions related to admissions in NEET-PG.

“By the time this court started examining the said question and the central government decided to revisit the criteria by appointing this committee, the process with respect to some appointments or admissions have taken place or must have been at an irreversible and advanced stage. The existing system which is going on since 2019, if disturbed at the end or fag-end of the process would create more complications than expected both for the beneficiaries as well as for the authorities,” it said.

The panel said that in case of admissions to educational institutions, sudden adoption of new criteria inevitably and necessarily would delay the process by several months which would have an inevitable cascading effect on all future admissions and educational activities or teaching or examinations.

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