NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court on Monday refused to postpone the National Eligibility Cum Entrance Test post-graduate (NEET-PG) examination scheduled for March 5, observing that it cannot interdict the process when the consequences remain uncertain for several candidates who were not before it.
“Let things stand where there are. Nothing in this world prevents anyone from trying again…It is an evolutionary process. Sometimes it can go wrong…We will just let it lie,” said a bench of justices S Ravindra Bhat and Sudhanshu Dhulia.
The bench dismissed petitions filed by a group of doctors, which pleaded for deferring the NEET-PG exam in view of a revised internship schedule that allows them time till July to complete their one-year compulsory internship. According to the doctors, since the counselling will take place only in August, NEET-PG exam should be postponed by another six weeks to give them more time to prepare. Senior counsel Gopal Sankaranarayanan and Vivek Tankha appeared for the petitioners.
BEET-PG is the entrance exam for various post graduate courses in medicine, surgery and dental.
The plea was, however, opposed by the Centre. Additional solicitor general Aishwarya Bhati, appearing for the union government, pointed out that all administrative arrangements are already in place and that no other date is available with the technology partner to conduct the exam in near future.
“Please, consider that we are trying to restore the calendar of two years back due to the pandemic. In the first window, nearly 203,000 students applied. Only 6,000 students applied after the internship deadline was extended,” she said, underlining that a large majority of the students were ready to sit for the exam.
The senior law officer also informed the bench that the counselling was likely to commence from July 15, without waiting for the August date. “The rest would be allowed to participate provisionally and would be considered on a case-by-case basis,” she said.
Satisfied with the ASG’s submissions, the bench decided to dismiss the petitions, keeping the current schedule intact.
During a previous hearing on Friday last week, the bench observed that a plea for postponement may impact those who have been eligible all this while and are anxiously waiting for the exam to take place.
“There is agony caused to those who have been preparing when an exam is postponed. In our anxiety to balance your rights, we will be trampling on the rights of several others,” it observed on Friday.
The petitioners approached the top court contending that the National Board of Examinations (NBE) twice modified the eligibility criteria, clearly reflecting oversight and mismanagement on its part of not consulting state medical bodies in advance. As a result, the petitioners argued that candidates did not get adequate time to prepare and contended that never in the history of NEET-PG has there ever been a five-month difference between the dates of the exam and counselling.
