The Supreme Court said Friday that the decision of the Center and the Medical Counseling Committee (MCC) not to hold a Special Stray Round of counseling for All India Quota in NEET-PG-2021 “is in the interest of medical education and public health” and rejected a series of petitions to fill the vacant 1,456 seats. A holiday bench of judges MR Shah and Aniruddha Bose said there can be no compromises whatsoever on the quality of medical education that will affect public health.
The decision by the Union Government and the Medical Guidance Commission not to conduct a special stray counseling round is in the interest of medical education and public health. There can be no compromise on the merits and/or quality of medical education, which could ultimately affect public health, the bank said, but noted it was a conscious decision and cannot be termed arbitrary. The highest court said that the admission process and that in medical training cannot be endless and must end at some point.
The timetable must be adhered to or it could ultimately affect medical education and public health, it said. The Supreme Court said the MCC and the Union of India should adhere to the timetable for completing the admission process when the current admission of NEET-PG-2021 is already behind schedule.
When a conscious decision is made by the Union government/Medical Counseling Committee, not to carry out further Special Stray Round treatment, the same cannot be said to be arbitrary,” the bank said. The highest court said the students cannot pray for admission to the vacant seats, which are mostly non-clinical, after about a year of academic sitting and eight to nine rounds of counseling.
Apart from the fact that after the closing of the last round of counseling on May 7, 2022, the entire software mechanism is closed and the deposit is refunded to the eligible candidates, it should be noted that the admission process for NEET-PG-2022 has already been completed. The results for the NEET-PG-2022 have been announced on June 1, 2022, and the counseling process is scheduled to begin in July 2022, the bank said. Therefore, if an extra special scattering round of counseling is performed now, such as prayers, in that case, it could affect the NEET-PG-2022 admission process, the supreme court said.
In view of the above and for the reasons stated above, Petitioners are not entitled to any exemption from a Mandamus writ instructing respondents to conduct a special stray advisory to fill the remaining vacant seats of NEET-PG-2021. Granting such an allowance now could have implications for medical education and ultimately for public health as noted above. Under the circumstances, both these subpoena requests and the special leave requests deserve to be denied and will be denied accordingly, the bank said.
The highest court on Thursday had said that there should be a limit to the stray round of counseling for All India Quota in NEET-PG-21 and that the students cannot gain entry by endangering people’s education and health. The Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS) on Wednesday informed the highest court that it has completed four rounds of online counseling for NEET-PG-21 and that it cannot fill 1456 seats by conducting a special stray round of counseling , since the software is closed.
On Wednesday, the highest court had lifted the MCC over the release of more than 1,450 seats in NEET-PG-21, saying it would not only cause difficulties for the aspirants but also lead to a shortage of doctors. The series of petitions were filed by doctors who appeared in the NEET-PG 2021-22 study and participated in Rounds 1 and 2 of the All India Quota (AIQ) Counseling and State Quota Counseling, followed by All India Mop-Up and State Mop-Up Rounds and concluded on May 7 by the MCC after the All India Stray Vacancy Round.
One of the petitions filed by Dr. Astha Goel and others through attorney Tanvi Dubey said on April 18, vide a notice, the MCC stated that there were 323 vacant seats in RUG Counseling, and to ensure that these precious seats do not go to waste, they would provide a special keep stray round. The advocacy said it is pertinent to state here that this is a practice previously followed by the MCC, where special UG and PG scatter rounds were conducted to ensure no seats were released. However, this was not followed this year.
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