The Supreme Court today issued notice on a plea challenging the decision of the National Medical Commission(NMC) to not hold the NEET-Super Speciality Exam (NEET-SS) for 2024. The plea was filed by thirteen doctors under Article 32 of the Constitution.
The bench comprising Chief Justice of India DY Chandrachud and Justice JB Pardiwala and Justice Manoj Misra noted that due to this decision of the NMC, there would not be a NEET-SS exam for students this year at all. The Court further issued notice to the Centre, the Medical Counselling Committee and the NMC.
The court also allowed the petitioner to add the National Board of Examination as a party respondent. The CJI initially asked why the petitioner had approached directly to the top court under Article 32 petition.
The counsel contended that the exam is conducted annually according to a fixed timeline, as per the previous Supreme Court judgment in Ashish Ranjan v. Union of India. In the aforesaid case, the Court had laid down a timeline schedule to be followed for completing admissions to medical colleges.
While reading from the minutes of the meetings of the NMC’s decision, the counsel for the petitioner underlined that the reason for not conducting the NEET-SS 2024 exam stems from the delayed admissions for MD, MS, and DMB courses through NEET-PG exam in the 2021 academic year.
Owing to COVID-19, these admissions were held from January to May 2022, pushing the course completion to January 2025. The NMC decided to postpone the NEET-SS 2024 exam to accommodate these students. The minutes of the meeting further stated that their decision is in order to accommodate those students of NEET-PG to sit for this examination, and that they are not conducting an examination this year.
Notably, regarding NEET-SS 2024 it was decided that admissions for academic year 2021 in MD, MS and DMB Courses were held in January to May 2022. Hence, NEET-SS 2024 may not be conducted in the current year. Nonetheless, that bit of conducting NEET-SS 2024 in the year 2024 will be decided later.
The matter is now scheduled for hearing on July 26.