Supreme Court refuses to interfere with cut-off marks for NEET super-speciality courses

The Supreme Court on Monday refused to lower the cutoff percentile for admission to NEET superspeciality courses saying doctors have to deal with patients life and merit cannot be disregardedA bench of Justices DY Chandrachud and Surya Kant said a decision has been taken not to lower the percentile which is a matter of academic policy and it cannot be faultedThe bench said the reasons put forth by the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare cannot be regarded as extraneous and arbitrary as doctors have to deal with a patients life and merit cannot be disregardedCandidates 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 heldSenior advocate PS Patwalia appearing for the petitioners who wanted the cutoff to be lowered submitted that out of the total seats 940 seats are still vacant for the academic year 202122 If the cutoff is not lowered these seats will go waste at a time when the country needs doctors he contendedHe said the cutoff has been reduced every now and then and the ministry has this year reduced the cutoff for other coursesIn the previous academic year the cutoff percentile was initially fixed at 50 but was reduced to 30 for 201920 and 45 for 202021 They have reduced cutoff marks for PG courses this year but not for the superspeciality courses They cannot choose to reduce the cutoff marks for certain categories only he saidAdditional Solicitor General Aishwarya Bhati appearing for Centre said during the academic year 201920 the cutoff percentile was reduced so as to bring down the number of vacant seats to 272 from 809 due to COVIDShe said for the academic year 202021 the percentile was reduced to 45 from 50 as a result of which vacant seats were reduced to 91 from the original over 900 seatsFor this academic year the percentile has been maintained as 50 for 940 seats which have remained vacant because the majority of the seats are those which do remain vacant A considered decision was taken after a meeting on May 4 with all the stakeholders that lowering the percentile would be like compromising the standards she saidThe bench said the court will have to take note that these doctors were not able to obtain the 50 percentile cutoff and they will be handling the patients in superspeciality categories This court will not like to interfere unless there is manifest arbitrariness the bench assertedThis story has been sourced from a third party syndicated feed agencies Midday accepts no responsibility or liability for its dependability trustworthiness reliability and data of the text Midday managementmiddaycom reserves the sole right to alter delete or remove without notice the content in its absolute discretion for any reason whatsoever