New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Wednesday refused to interfere with the National Medical Commission's decision to defer the NEET Super Speciality (NEET SS) for 2024. However, the apex court asked the NMC to come out with a schedule within a month.
A three-judge bench led by Chief Justice of India D Y Chandrachud and comprising Justices J B Pardiwala and Manoj Misra was hearing a petition filed by nearly a dozen doctors. During the hearing, the bench observed that the data given by the NMC suggested that at least 40 per cent of the students who take the NEET-SS are from the immediately preceding batch.
The apex court observed that petitioners’, who have appeared in the NEET-SS before, would not be prejudiced if the exam is deferred to next year. The NMC counsel submitted that if NEET-SS is conducted this year, then the students of the 2021 postgraduate batch would lose the opportunity.
The bench observed that the decision of the NMC is "fairly equitable" and cannot be termed as "arbitrary” and it acknowledged that delay in the exam will cause some hardship to the petitioners, but such hardship has to be balanced with the other concerns raised by the NMC.
The bench agreed with the petitioners’ contention that the NMC must take an early decision on laying down the schedule for the NEET-SS 2024 exam and asked the NMC to come out with a schedule within a month.
According to NMC, admissions were delayed for MD, MS, and DMB courses through the NEET-PG exam in 2021. Due to COVID-19, these admissions were held from January 2022 to May 2022, pushing the course completion to January 2025, and it is the reason for not conducting the NEET-SS 2024. Therefore, it was decided to postpone the NEET-SS 2024 exam to accommodate these students.
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