No special round of NEET-PG 2021 counselling: Top court

NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court on Friday dismissed a petition seeking a special round of counselling to fill 1,456 vacant NEET-PG 2021 seats as it noted that the process of medical education cannot be endless and timelines for filling up such seats, if not adhered to, may affect standards of medical education and public health.

“The process of admission and that too in medical education cannot be endless. It must end at a particular point of time. The time schedule has to be adhered to, otherwise, ultimately, it may affect the medical education and the public health,” a bench of justices M R Shah and Aniruddha Bose said.

The bench was hearing a petition filed on May 20 by a group of doctors led by Astha Goel who informed the court about the seats which fell vacant after the last mop-up counselling round for NEET-PG 2021-22 ended on May 7. The petitioner demanded a special round of counselling to fill these seats.

The bench, however, noted that the vacancy arose after nine rounds of counselling (five under All India Quota seats and four under state quota seats) and about 1,100 of 1,456 seats fell in non-clinical category.

These seats, the bench said, are wasted every year as they are meant for those opting for teaching and do not help doctors in their careers.

“The petitioners are not entitled to any relief of writ of mandamus directing the respondents to conduct a special stray round of counselling for filling up the remaining vacant seats of Neet-pg-2021. Granting of such relief now may affect the medical education and ultimately the public health,” the bench said as it dismissed the plea.

“When the current admission for NEET-PG-2021 is already behind time schedule and even after conducting eight to nine rounds of counselling, still some seats, which are mainly non-clinical courses seats have remained vacant and thereafter when a conscious decision is taken by the Union Government/the Medical Counselling Committee, not to conduct a further Special Stray Round of counselling, it cannot be said that the same is arbitrary,” it added.

The Centre’s affidavit filed on Wednesday evening said at least 600 seats remained vacant in 2019 and 2020, and this was not on account of an absence of opportunity to exercise the option but lack of takers for non-clinical seats.

While reserving its orders on the petition on Thursday, the bench observed: “Doctors should be well trained. There cannot be any compromise with education as it can’t be that they are trained for less than three years considering the impact it has on the health of the people.”