Think over and fall in line to restore old NEET SS pattern, SC tells Centre

The Supreme Court on Tuesday pulled up the Centre on the changes in the examination pattern for National Eligibility-cum- Entrance Test- Super Specialty (NEET-SS) 2021, saying it appeared that medical education and its regulation in the country have become a business.

"This would become a tragedy for medical education in the country," a bench presided over by D Y Chandrachud said.

The bench gave the Centre one day's time to "think over and fall in line" to restore the old syllabus, and put the matter for further consideration on Wednesday.

To a contention by the Centre's counsel that seats remained vacant in several colleges, the bench said that usually seats are never vacant in government colleges, rather they are always vacant in private colleges.

“We have a surmise that the seats in government colleges are not lying vacant. It is a reasonable surmise. It appears that the entire haste is for filling the vacant seats," the bench also comprising Justices Vikram Nath and B V Nagarathna said.

The bench further told the Centre’s counsel, “If there is obduracy on your part, arms of law are long enough to prevent that”.

Taking objections to change in examination pattern, the bench said now questions are from general medicine.

"What this does is privileging students who have done general medicine at the cost of all other feeder specialties," the bench said, asking, “what was the hurry? You have an examination pattern which had been going on from 2018 to 2020.”

Earlier, the Centre has told the court it has decided to defer the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET) Super Speciality exam by a period of two months to enable the candidates prepare for it under the revised scheme.

It now decided to hold the exam on January 10-11, 2022, instead of previous schedule of November 13-14, 2021.

A group of PG doctors led by Prateek Rastogi challenged validity of August 31, 2021 notification, changing the pattern of the exam, by which the entirety of questions for the critical care super speciality will be drawn from general medicines, leaving the candidates from other disciplines in a difficult situation.

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