The Supreme Court on Friday will hear a petition filed by 23 doctors from various parts of the country for an extended round of counselling for candidates who have qualified in the National Eligibility-cum Entrance Test (Super Spcciality) examination to fill up vacant seats available in government and private medical colleges.
A Bench led by Chief Justice of India Dipak Misra agreed to hear the petition on September 22 after an urgent mentioning from the doctors’ side.
NEET-SS is an eligibility-cum-ranking examination prescribed as the single entrance examination to various DM/M.Ch. courses under the Indian Medical Council (Amendment) Act, 2016. No other entrance examination either at the State or institutional level is valid for entry to DM/M.Ch courses.
The petition, whose main petitioner is a Chennai-based doctor, T.T. Senthilnathan, said more than 25% of the seats in Super Specialty DM/ M.Ch. Courses in the country remain unfilled despite the fact that two rounds of counseling are over. The petition, represented by senior advocate Indu Malhotra, said all the doctors who have moved the court had appeared in the NEET for admission to super-specialty courses.
The NEET-SS for this year was conducted on June 10-11. The results were published in July. In the first round of counseling conducted in August, only 1141 seats of a total 1969 seats for DM/M.Ch were made available.
“To the surprise of the petitioners, the total number of actual DM/ M.Ch. seats available for locking of preferences was far lesser than the actual number of seats initially shown on the website of the Respondent No. 2 (Medical Council of India),” the petition said.
Apparently, 828 seats were not offered at all for admission.
However, a second round of counselling was conducted after the Supreme Court intervened in the issue.
But despite the second round, more than 25% seats, that is, around 500 seats, are still vacant.
The petition wanted the apex court to direct the Director General of Health Services to extend the last date for admission and joining in super-specialty courses. It submitted that counseling would be online and could be easily completed in a couple of days.
