Supreme Court refuses to reduce cut-off for NEET super-speciality courses
India Today
The Supreme Court refused to reduce the cut-off for NEET super-speciality courses on Monday.
On Monday, the Supreme Court refused to decrease the cut-off percentile for NEET super-specialty courses admission while remarking that merit cannot be disregarded as doctors have to deal with a patient’s life. The decision not to lower the percentile was made by a bench of Justices DY Chandrachud and Surya Kant, who said it was a matter of academic policy and could not be faulted. Stating that the bench cannot regard the reasons put forward by the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare as extraneous and arbitrary because “doctors have to deal with a patient's life and merit cannot be disregarded”.
The SC bench held, “Candidates are sufficiently available for undertaking the counselling of vacant seats but the decision to not reduce the percentile is based on not compromising the merit.
“Question of whether the percentile should be reduced further is a matter of academic policyin the circumstances it is not possible for the court to entertain a plea for directing the reduction of the percentile,” it added.
Appearing for the petitioners seeking the lowering of the cut-off, Senior Advocate PS Patwalia submitted that 940 seats out of the total seats are still vacant for the academic year 2021-22.
Contending further, he said these seats will go to waste at a time when the country needs doctors if the cut-off is not lowered.
Senior Advocate PS Patwalia further contended that cut-off has been reduced every now and then, while adding that the ministry has reduced the cut-off for other courses this year too.
He added, “In the previous academic year, the cut-off percentile was initially fixed at 50 but was reduced to 30 for 2019-20 and 45 for 2020-21. They have reduced cut-off marks for PG courses this year but not for the super-speciality courses.
