Delhi High Court ordered Centre to submit Documents pertaining to establishment of Percentile Cut-off in NEET PG Medical Courses

exam student law insider

Khushi Doshi

Published on: March 16, 2022 at 11:35 IST

The Delhi High Court on Tuesday ordered the Central Government to submit all files pertaining to the establishment and reduction of cut-off percentiles in postgraduate medical courses for the current academic year.

Acting Chief Justice Vipin Sanghi and Justice Navin Chawla of the Division Bench directed the Centre to submit all details by March 23, when the case will be heard again.

The decision was made in response to a Petition filed by some medical students challenging the regulation requiring at least a 50 percentile in the National Eligibility-Cum-Entrance Test as eligibility criteria for admission to PG courses.

The Petition, filed by Lawyers Varun Singh, Deepti Arya, Akshya Dev, and Rishabh Rana, claims that despite the availability of qualified Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery graduates willing to apply for Post Graduate courses, hundreds of seats are going unfilled due to the percentile system.

According to the Court, approximately 5,500 of the total 23,000 seats for PG courses will be vacant in 2020. During the hearing, the Bench stated that the percentile rule does not make sense, especially given the hundreds of vacant seats.

When counsel for the National Medical Commission argued that the system is necessary because unworthy candidates should not be allowed to specialise, the judges responded that they are not suggesting that unqualified students be admitted to PG courses, but that relative merit (via the percentile system) cannot be used to limit the number of people without considering their merit.

The Bench stated that no continuances will be permitted on the next hearing date.

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