SC asks govt to reduce medical cut-off marks

SC asks govt to reduce medical cut-off marks

‘Low Qualifying Mark Doesn’t Affect Standard’

Dhananjay.Mahapatra@timesgroup.com

New Delhi:09.02.2021 

The Supreme Court on Monday ruled that reducing the cut-off marks for admissions to courses does not lower the standards of education and overruled the Union government by directing lowering of qualifying marks by 10 percentile points to help private colleges fill nearly 7,000 BDS seats for the academic year 2020-21 by February 18.

A bench of Justices L N Rao and Krishna Murari accepted senior advocate Maninder Singh’s argument that the government could not have refused to accept Dental Council of India’s recommendations for lowering the qualifying marks by 20 percentile points on the ground that lowering the cut-off mark could have adverse impact on education standards. Singh had said the Union government had earlier accepted similar recommendations for lowering cut-off for super speciality courses in medical sciences.

Writing the judgment, Justice Rao said, “If reducing minimum marks amounts to lowering the standards, the Union government would not do so for super speciality courses. We are in agreement with Singh, counsel for the petitioners, that lowering the minimum marks and reducing the percentile for admission to the first-year BDS course would not amount to lowering the standards of education.” It ordered admissions to BDS courses strictly on merit and said the process of admission be completed by February 18.

The bench also found force in additional solicitor general Aishwarya Bhati’s argument that fees charged by private dental colleges were a deterrent in filling up seats. “Only 265 out of 7,000 vacant seats are in government colleges. All the other unfilled seats are in private dental colleges. The managements of private dental colleges shall consider reducing the fee charged by them to encourage students to join the colleges,” the SC said.

“We direct that the vacant seats in first year BDS course for the year 2020-2021 shall be filled up from candidates who have participated in NEET (UG) for the year 2020-2021 after lowering the percentile mark by 10 percentile points,” it added.

This means general category candidates with 40 percentile points, SC/ST/OBCs with 30 percentile points and physically challenged candidates with 35 percentile points would be eligible for admission to BDS courses in government and private colleges.

Singh had relied on proceedings relating to lowering of minimum marks for super speciality courses for the year 2019-2020 and for admission in Ayurveda, Yoga and Naturopathy, Unani, Siddha and Homeopathy (AYUSH) - UG courses for the year 2020-2021. He argued that 7,000 seats in BDS courses were vacant and the available infrastructure would be wasted.

Bhati submitted that 7.71 lakh candidates were found to be eligible for filling up 82,000 MBBS and 28,000 BDS seats, thus for each vacant seat seven candidates were available. She said the Centre decided against lowering the qualifying marks as there were sufficient dentists in India. “Lack of keenness of students to join BDS, especially in private colleges which charge exorbitant fees, as they are interested in MBBS courses, is yet another ground,” she said.

The apex court asked the Centre to lower the cutoff by 10 percentile points to help private colleges fill nearly 7,000