SC reserves order on plea seeking to conduct special stray round for NEET PG 2021
Jun 09, 2022
New Delhi [India], June 9 : The Supreme Court has reserved order on plea seeking to conduct a Special Stray Round of counselling to allow the candidates to contest for the vacant seats which are available after the conduct of the stray vacancy round of All India Quota (AIQ).
The vacation bench of Justices MR Shah and Aniruddha Bose said that it will pronounce its order tomorrow. The order was reserved after hearing the submission of both sides.
The court observed that eight rounds of counselling had happened before the seats remained vacant. The Court also noted that it is a three-year course and more than half term has gone and a good amount of the seats are all non-clinical seats.
It also remarked that there cannot be any compromise with education.
Additional Solicitor General Balbir Singh, appearing for the Centre and Medical Counselling Committee (MCC) submitted that classes have already started in February and it will have a detrimental effect if someone will take classes after 6 to 8 months in these courses.
The apex court expressed dismay over vacant seats yesterday. It also raised this issue today and remarked such a big number of seats are going vacant. "You must be right that if few seats would have remained vacant, we would not have bothered at all," the Court said.
ASG Singh replied that the vacant seats are mostly non-clinical. He explained that in
non-clinical seats one can be an educationist but cannot be a doctor. ASG submitted that when it comes to depositing the fees, none takes them up.
ASG said that out of 1,456 seats, 1100 seats are in private institutions and 300 are in govt colleges. ASG further submitted that in private colleges, fees are too high.
On Wednesday, the MCC in an affidavit stated that filing of 1,456 vacant seats for NEET 2021 will disrupt the whole process for the upcoming counselling session NEET-PG 2022.
The response came in an affidavit filed on a plea seeking to conduct a Special Stray Round of counselling to allow the candidates to contest for the vacant seats which are available after the conduct of the stray vacancy round of All India Quota (AIQ).
The MCC apprised the top court that at present, the software that was being used for conducting online counselling 2021 is closed and a refund of the security deposit for participation in PG counselling 2021 is also initiated.
The court was hearing a plea seeking to direct the Respondent Medical Counselling Committee (MCC) to conduct a Special Stray Round of counselling to allow the candidates to participate in the vacant seats which are available after the conduct of the stray vacancy round of the All India Quota (AIQ).
The petitioners were represented by advocate Milind Kumar Advocate. The Petitioners
appeared in NEET-PG 2021-22 and participated in Rounds 1 and 2 of All India Quota (AIQ) Counselling and State Quota Counselling which was followed by All India Mop-Up and State Mop-Up Rounds and was concluded on 07.05.2022 by Medical Counselling Committee post the All India Stray Vacancy Round. The Petitioners were not able to secure a seat in any of the rounds.
The petitioners claimed that they are aggrieved by the counselling process which was conducted by MCC in a manner that all the vacant seats were not a part of the Stray vacancy round of the counselling.
They said that the cause of action for filing the present Writ Petition arose on May 11 2022 when the petitioners received a reply to the RTI they had filed wherein it was stated that "at the time of online allotment process all medical/ dental post-graduate seats were exhausted but due to non-joining, resignation, and non-reported some seats remained vacant". However, official data has not been provided, the petitioners said.
Hence, the petitioner has sought to direct Respondent MCC to provide the exact number of vacant seats after the conduct of the stray vacancy round of AIQ and to conduct a Special Stray Round of counselling to allow the candidates to participate in the vacant seats which are available after the conduct of stray vacancy round of AIQ.
