Supreme Court Bats for One Medical Test in Two Phases for This Year

The Supreme Court of India has made it clear that there will be only one entrance examination for MBBS and BDS courses in the current academic session 2016-17 through National Eligibility Entrance Test (NEET). The court made it clear that the numerous medical tests that takes place around the country for admission of students in various state government and private colleges, would be scrapped from this year onwards. Though, a bench of Justices A R Dave and Shiva Kirti Singh approved the proposal of the government, CBSE and Medical Council of India, by taking All India Pre-Medical and Pre-Dental Entrance Test as the phase I examination of NEET. The AIPMT examination is scheduled to take place on 1 May, 2016, where nearly 6.6 lakh candidates applied this year.

Those aspiring students who have not applied for the AIPMT this time, would be given another chance to appear in the Phase II of NEET, which would be held on 24 July 2016. Both the phases will be standardized by CBSE and final results will be declared by 17 August 2016. MCI, which also came in support of the decision of the court, demanded that the CBSE should fasten up the process a bit to make sure that the sessions could begin from 1 August 2016. But to their disappointment, the bench approved the schedule proposed by CBSE and said that two phase NEET examination would take place this year, dismissing all the pleas of state government and private colleges.

Presently there are almost 90 different entrance examinations that take place over the country in various state government and private medical colleges. They all challenged the NEET, but failed to impress the bench in Supreme Court resulting in stopping their own medical examinations. Asking all the colleges to accept NEET results to admit students, the Supreme Court bench further stated, “In view of the submissions made on behalf of the respondents (Centre, CBSE, MCI), we record that NEET shall be held as stated by them. We further clarify that notwithstanding any order passed by any court earlier with regard to not holding NEET, this order shall operate.”

The order was passed due to the PIL filed by NGO Sankalp Charitable Trust, who demanded a single window medical examination in India. The NEET would not be applicable for the PG courses this year, as the exam has already been conducted and counseling process for the year is on. The court further ordered that NEET gets a wide publicity across the country in order to ensure the students who had not applied for AIPMT to not get panicked as they would another chance in the Phase II test of the exam. The court directed the police of the centre and state to extend its support to CBSE so that they can conduct NEET timely and fairly.

Since 2013, when the Supreme Court gave the ruling to stop NEET, the private colleges as well as the state government run colleges were conducting their own entrance examinations. In order to curb the malpractices in admission such as capitation fees and discretionary criteria used by private colleges to indulge in profiteering by circumventing a merit-based section system for allotment of MBBS, BDS and PG seats, the Supreme court has presented its ruling firmly.

The Supreme Court, recalled its previous judgment on 11 April 2016 saying the verdict which quashed NEET earlier needs reconsideration as it didn’t take into “consideration some binding precedents and more particularly, there were no discussion among the members of the bench before pronouncing the judgment.”