NEET results tomorrow, SC rejects separate rank lists for CBSE, state board students
New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Tuesday declined to pass an interim order directing the Medical Council of India and the CBSE to declare a separate merit list for CBSE and State Board students in the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET) held on July 24 for admissions into private medical colleges across India.
A bench of Justices Kurian Joseph and Shiva Kirti Singh, however, issued notice to the Centre, the Medical Council of India and CBSE on a batch of writ petitions from S. Rishesh and 20 others challenging the NEET ordinance (which has now become an Act) exempting government colleges from NEET and providing admission to students in private medical colleges only through NEET.
After hearing arguments from senior counsel Rahul Srivastava, Sanjay Hegde, Jayant Muthuraj and V. Balaji, Justice Shiva Kirti Singh said, “All these arguments were advanced earlier. We have already refused to stay. Admissions can be either through NEET or not, we can’t dilute the ordinance. We will issue notice and tag all petitions to be listed together.”
The petitioners mostly from Tamil Nadu also wanted an interim direction that admissions for this year to private medical colleges should be done only on the basis of higher secondary marks as was done last year; or in the alternative direct MCI and CBSE to provide a proportionate quota to the students who studied in Tamil Nadu State Board and participated in the NEET conducted for the Academic year 2016-2017 by publishing a separate merit list.
The petitioners submitted that the syllabus of CBSE and method of teaching is totally different from that of the State Board. The students studying under the Tamil Nadu State Board are not trained for objective type entrance tests. Now compelling the State Board Students to study a different syllabus and write a different style of exam in a short span of two months will be unfair and would violate article 14 of the Constitution.
They further submitted that permitting CBSE to conduct entrance test only in English and Hindi languages violates the federal system and affects the basic structure of the Constitution. They said the Ordinance leads to a hostile discrimination amongst the same class of students as it allows exemption in respect to filling up of government assigned seats in the private medical college, without recourse to the students taking the NEET.
They pointed out that students from Tamil Nadu are in a disadvantageous position. For example, a student who scored 97 per cent will be joining government colleges without any exams, whereas a student who scored 95 per cent or less will have to undergo a stiffer exam under NEET. This is clear discrimination and merely punitive.
They also submitted that in the July 24 exam, about 3000 CBSE students and 4 lakh Tamil Nadu state board students competed for 1100 medical seats. But due to huge disparity in the NEET syllabus, the entire merit list will have names of CBSE students and the Tamil Nadu state board students will not find a place on the list.
