SC to hear NEET-PG case today
NEW DELHI: Petitions challenging reservations in the national quota of seats in postgraduate medical courses will be heard in the Supreme Court on Wednesday after the Centre urged it to urgently list the matter.
A two-judge bench of justices DY Chandrachud and AS Bopanna will hear the petitions challenging reservation for other backward classes (OBCS) and economically weaker sections (EWS) in the all-india quota NEET-PG seats on Wednesday.
Resident doctors who have qualified for postgraduate courses have been protesting the delay in counselling because the matter of reservations is pending in court.
Appearing for the Union government, solicitor general (SG) Tushar Mehta on Tuesday told a bench headed by Chief Justice of
India NV Ramana that the protesting resident doctors had genuine concerns, which can only be addressed only if the matter is listed urgently.
“These matters relate to persons belonging to EWS. A statement was made by us that prevent further counselling for PG admissions. The resident doctors are protesting for this reason. Their concerns are genuine,” Mehta said.
He requested that, for a limited purpose, even a bench of two judges headed by justice Dhananjaya Y Chandrachud could be constituted to hear the pending petitions. On Monday, Mehta made a similar request before justice Chandrachud, seeking an early listing for Tuesday instead of the prefixed date of January 6. Justice Chandrachud assured him at the time that he would take this up with the chief justice.
The matter pending before the court has been filed by resident doctors who have challenged a July 29, 2021 notification by the Centre introducing 27% OBC quota and 10% EWS quota in the NEET all-india quota seats. The petitions questioned the basis for applying the EWS quota, and said that such reservation would exceed the 50% benchmark set by the top court in its earlier decisions since there is also 22.5% reservation for Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribes.
In October, the top court raised doubts on whether EWS beneficiaries can be uniformly clubbed together as persons belonging to households with annual earnings below ₹8 lakh without considering the ruralurban divide, purchasing power in different regions, and other factors that vary across states. To quell these doubts, the Centre formed a three-member committee to revisit the criteria for identifying EWS in November, and put the counselling process of Neet-pg seats on hold.
The committee, which revisited the January 17, 2019 order passed by the Centre prescribing criteria to identify EWS, concluded that the ₹8 lakh limit is not “over-inclusive”.