The Bombay high court on Tuesday dismissed a petition that challenged the relaxation on qualifying marks given by the Union government for admissions to post graduate medical courses for doctors who had written NEET-PG and said that it would be “most inappropriate” for it to interfere with the admission process, which is nearing its end.
A division bench comprising Justices D.Y. Chandrachud and S.C. Gupte that was hearing the matter said, “The admission process is substantially complete in the state of Maharashtra and it would be most inappropriate to interfere when the process is nearing its completion.”
The NEET-PG examinations were held for the first time in the country between November 23, 2012 and December 6, 2012.
According to the directions of the Supreme Court, for admission to any PG course, it is necessary for an unreserved candidate to obtain minimum marks of 50 percentile in NEET-PG. However, for SC/ST and OBC candidates it is at 40 percentile and for physically challenged it is at 45 percentile.
“The results of NEET-PG were declared on May 17 this year, following which an all-India merit list (for all India seats) as well as state-wise merit list (for state quota seats) was prepared. After the announcements of results, the SC/ST candidates approached the Central government stating that even though they had scored 50 per cent marks, they were not within the 40 percentile and were not eligible to appear for counseling,” said Neeta Masurkar, senior counsel appearing for Union government.
Keeping this in mind, the Central government in consultation with the Medical Association of India, exercised the relaxation for every student who appeared for NEET-PG, across the country, she added.
The Central government had reduced the percentiles to 26 for the unreserved category and 18.8 for OBC and SC categories and 18.9 for the ST category.