Neet must for admissions to minority med colleges: SC

Dhananjay.Mahapatra@timesgroup.com

New Delhi:30.04.2020

Holding national interest to be above a religious and linguistic minority community’s right to administer educational institutions, Supreme Court on Wednesday ruled that single window National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test (Neet) will be mandatory for admissions to medical and dental courses offered by private unaided minority medical and dental colleges. As many as 76 petitions, including many by reputed minority medical institutions like Christian Medical College Vellore and Ludhiana, had challenged imposition of Neet claiming it violates the fundamental right of minority communities to set up educational institutions and frame procedures for admitting students.

Dismissing all petitions, a bench of Justices Arun Mishra, Vineet Saran and M R Shah said, “We hold there is no violation of the rights of unaided/aided minority to administer institutions under Articles 19(1) (g) and 30 read with Articles 25, 26 and 29(1) of the Constitution of India by prescribing of uniform examination of Neet for admissions in the graduate and postgraduate professional courses of medical as well as dental science.”

SC: Neet was necessitated because of ‘ill-reputation developed by MCI’

Terming Neet a standardisation of admission process devised in national interest, the bench said, “it does not interfere with the rights of the unaided minority institutions as it has been imposed in national interest considering the malpractices of granting illegal admission by virtually selling the seats in derogation to rights of meritorious students. The charitable activity of education became a saleable commodity and prerogative of wealthy persons and poor students were forced to get education funded from banks.”

It said, “minority and private institutions have to admit students based on merit in the permissible category, based on Neet as per procedure prescribed under the Act and Regulations.” An SC bench headed by Justice Altmas Kabir in 2013 had struck down Neet through a controversial judgement. Three years later, SC had allowed review petitions to revive Neet. But, the question remained whether the tests could be applied to unaided private medical and dental colleges set up by religious and linguistic minority communities.

Writing the 108-page judgment for the bench, Justice Mishra said Neet was necessitated because of “ill-reputation developed by MCI”. He said the system of admission still suffers from many malpractices and that national interest requires further improvement in the system to eradicate evils from the system.

“The situation is still grim and require to be dealt with firm hand and steely determination,” he said. Analysing the weight of minority community’s fundamental right to have complete autonomy in framing norms for admission under privileges conferred by Article 30 of the Constitution, the bench said, “rights to administer an institution...are not above the law and other Constitutional provisions... Professional educational institutions constitute a class by themselves.”

“Specific measures to make the administration of such institutions transparent can be imposed... Regulatory measures (Neet) are intended for proper functioning of institutions and to ensure that standard of education is maintained and does not fall low under the guise of an exclusive right of management to the extent of maladministration.”

Full report on www.toi.in