Supreme Court dismisses plea on special counselling for 1,456 NEET-PG seats

Satya Prakash

New Delhi, June 10

More than 1,450 PG medical seats shall remain vacant as the Supreme Court on Friday dismissed petitions seeking a special stray round of counselling to enable candidates to vie for the vacant seats available after the stray round of All-India Quota (AIQ).

“The process of admission and that too in the medical education cannot be endless. It must end at a particular point of time. The time schedule has to be adhered to. Otherwise, it may affect the medical education and public health,” a Bench led by Justice MR Shah said.

No compromise

Even after eight to nine rounds of counselling, 1,456 of 40,000 seats remained vacant…. There can’t be any compromise on quality of medical education. — SC Bench

“Even after eight to nine rounds of counselling, 1,456 of 40,000 seats have remained vacant. Of these, more than 1,100 seats are non-clinical seats, which every year remain vacant,” the Bench noted.

“There cannot be any compromise with the merit and/or quality of medical education, which may ultimately affect the public health,” said the Bench, which reserved its order on the issue on Thursday after hearing arguments from petitioner doctors, the Medical Counselling Committee and the Centre.