Deepali Kalia-
The two-judge bench of the Supreme Court consisting of Justice D.Y. Chandrachud and Justice M.R. Shah issued a notice to the Medical Counselling Committee on a petition filed by the dental surgeons distressed by the delay in the announcement of counselling date for the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET)- Master in Dental Surgery (MDS) 2021.
The petitioners in the case were represented by Senior Advocate Vikas Singh along with advocate Tanvi Dubey and Advocate-on-record Dr. Charu Mathur.
The Bench observed that the petition has been filed by doctors who have a recognized Bachelor in Dental Surgery (“BDS”) degree from universities and institutes in India which is registered with the State Dental Council. They have in addition completed the mandatory rotatory yearlong internship from a recognized dental college and have acquired provisional/permanent registration.
The petitioners in the instant case sat in the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET)-MDS 2021 conducted on 16/12/2020 by the National Board of Examination (“NBE”) in order to get admission into the Master in Dental Surgery course (“MDS”).
It was noted by the Bench that since the declaration of the result on 31/12/2020, 6 months have elapsed and the candidate counselling are still on hold which is unfair to the candidates as their valuable time are getting wasted.
The petitioners stated that (NEET)-MDS is the sole eligibility cum entrance examination in order to secure admission to MDS Courses for the academic session 2021.
It was also submitted by the petitioners that time and again they had tried to reach out to the Medical Counselling Committee (MCC) and Dental Council of India in order to get an idea about the counselling schedule but no update in that regard has been provided yet.
