NEET MDS 2021 - Announce Counselling Dates Within One Week; Delay Affects Students' Future, Supreme Court To Centre

NEET MDS 2021 - Announce Counselling Dates Within One Week; Delay Affects Students' Future, Supreme Court To Centre

Srishti Ojha

12 July 2021 4:14 PM

"Imagine what a loss to India by not allowing a whole batch of PG students to complete their education for 1 year", the bench orally observed.

The Supreme Court on Monday directed the Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare to announce the counselling dates for NEET-MDS 2021 within a week.

A bench comprising Justices DY Chandrachud and Hrishikesh Roy observed that the delay in counselling will lead to serious consequences to the students, who have been waiting after the test results were announced on December 31, 2020.

The Court passed the following order :

"Prima facie we have heard Senior Advocate Vikas Singh for petitioners and ASG Mr KM Natraj appearing for Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare. On the request of ASG we grant one week's time for a response to the grievance set out in petition.

We expect that an expeditious decision will be taken within course of next week and court be informed when Union Government proposes to hold counselling for students whose MDS NEET results were declared on 31 December 2020. We hope that the Union Government would be conscious of the serious consequences which will be faced by these students as a result of long delay in completing the counselling".

Courtroom Exchange:

During the hearing, the Bench asked ASG KM Nataraj " these petitioners appeared in NEET MDS and results were declared in December. Merely because NEET PG has been postponed how can you stop counselling for MDS?"

Senior Counsel Vikas Singh appearing for petitioners submitted that, "This exercise has to be done virtually... so this can be done. When you talk about controlled environment you can always have covid appropriate behaviour. There's likelihood of third wave only when there is covid inappropriate behaviour".

Singh added that " I don't understand why one batch has been suffering. And no body is giving any thought of it. I can understand Kumbh mela, election rallies happening or tourists flocking without masks, but these are completely regulated environments. There's no justification why counselling can't take place."

ASG Natraj submitted, "We want to hold counselling and its our duty. The issue is different, regards to some reservation. Recently Madras High Court passed an order to provide reservation under All India quota and Committee was constituted to work out modalities".