A writ petition has been filed in the Supreme Court seeking directions to postpone the INI CET Examination, 2021 which is scheduled to be conducted by the All India Institute of Medical Science (AIIMS) on June 16, 2021.
The petition has been filed by a group of 26 MBBS graduates who opted to sit for the Post Graduate Entrance Test INI CET for higher studies in the field of medicine/post-graduate studies.
The plea avers, “with the positivity rate in India being 20+% and in some places, it is as high as 50%, more than 80,000 doctors will be appearing for INI CET. A conservative assumption that about 10% are infected, this will itself show the difficulty in arranging for beds and life support for nearly 8,000 doctors who will be taking this examination.”
The plea states that, “the same testing authority, which is to conduct INI CET, had declared postponement of the B.Sc. and M.Sc. Nursing Exams, just about 24 hours before declaring that INI CET will be conducted on 16th June, 2021. This step motherly attitude towards the doctors is completely uncalled for. Further, the 10th and 12th Standard examinations have been cancelled which itself shows that the Government is conscious of the fact that the deadly virus is a threat amongst the younger population. A typical age bracket of doctors appearing for INI CET would be 24 to 28 years thereby being in an extremely vulnerable section also as a result of being in close proximity and attending to COVID-19 patients.”
“It is also a possibility that if the said examination is conducted, many doctors will resign in order to prepare for the NEET PG examination which is to be conducted in August 2021 since they might distrust the Government by not keeping their end of the bargain with respect to conducting the examination after August 31, 2021, and providing one month’s prior notice. In the instant case, only 19 days prior notice is given. Also, centers for examination are in different states or far from the aspirants’ place of working which may require traveling and thereby facing travel restrictions. It is also submitted that many of these doctors are not fully vaccinated and a lot of them have not received their 1st dose.”
“The conducting of this examination is resulting in endangering the life of thousands of doctors who are frontline workers in different hospitals which is a clear negation of Article 21 of the Constitution of India,” the plea says.
It adds, “Additionally as mentioned above interference of the court is warranted because the students who have filled up the form but are treating COVID-19 patients on a daily basis and therefore are at a huge risk of contracting COVID-19 and thereby ousted from taking the examination. It is also important to mention here that writ petitioner no.1 Dr. Poulami Mondal is in the ICU and being treated for COVID-19 at Desun Hospital, Siliguri.”