Supreme Court sets aside Centre decision not to reduce marks for BDS course admission

The Supreme Court has set aside the decision of the Centre not to reduce the minimum marks for admission to BDS course in 2020-2021 while stating that it suffers from the vices of “illegality” and “irrationality”. The Apex Court has directed that the vacant seats in the first year BDS Course for 2020-2021 shall be filled up from the candidates who have participated in the NEET (UG) courses for 2020-2021 after lowering the percentile mark by 10 percentile. 

A two-judge bench headed by Justices L. Nageswara Rao and Krishna Murari has noted in its order that the managements of private dental colleges shall consider reducing the fee charged by them to encourage students to join the college. The Supreme Court agreed with the Centre that the high fee charged by private dental colleges contributes to BDS seats not getting filled up. 

The Court has directed that the candidates belonging to the general category who have secured 40 percentile shall be eligible to be considered for admission in the first-year BDS Course for 2020-2021. “Likewise, students belonging to the SC/ST/OBC categories shall be qualified if they have secured 30 percentile. In so far as General candidates with bench mark disabilities specified under the Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act, 2016, they would be eligible if they have secured 35 percentile. The admissions shall be made strictly in accordance with merit and the admission process shall be completed by 18.02.2021,” said the Top Court. 

It further said,

“Any other student who has qualified in NEET (UG) – 2020 even without lowering the minimum marks and is willing to participate in the admission process shall also be considered for admission to BDS course.” 

Lowered NEET cutoffs for BDS Courses 2020-2021

The decision by the Supreme Court comes in response to the petition filed by Harshit Aggarwal & Ors. Vs Union of India & Anr. The Supreme Court judgment stated that by lowering the NEET cutoff for BDS, the standard of education will not be compromised. 

The petition was filed by students who appeared in the National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test (NEET) examination 2020 for admissions to the first-year Bachelor of Dental Surgery (BDS) conducted on 13.09.2020. They submitted that they did not obtain the minimum marks prescribed by Sub-Regulation (ii) of Regulation II of the Dental Council of India, Revised BDS Course Regulations, 2007. Therefore, they were not eligible for BDS course. The second respondent Dental Council of India, recommended the lowering of qualifying cut off percentile for admission to BDS course for the academic year 2020-2021. 

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Justice L. Nageswara Rao said that

“…While arriving at a decision on 30.12.2020 not to lower the minimum marks it does not appear that the first Respondent has consulted the second Respondent in accordance with the proviso to Sub-Regulation (ii) of the Regulation II .”

The proviso to Sub-Regulation (ii) of Regulation II says that “…when sufficient number of candidates in the respective categories fail to secure minimum marks as prescribed in National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test held for any academic year for admission to BDS Course, the Central Government in consultation with Dental Council of India may at its discretion lower the minimum marks required for admission to BDS Course for candidates belonging to respective categories and marks so lowered by the Central Government shall be applicable for the said academic year only ”.

Senior Counsel Maninder Singh, appearing for the petitioners, submitted that the proviso to Regulation II (5) (ii) of the Regulations empowers the Central Government to lower the minimum marks required for admission to BDS course in consultation with the Dental Council of India. In spite of the recommendation made by the Dental Council of India for lowering the qualifying cutoff percentile, the first Respondent has arbitrarily and unreasonably not acted upon the recommendation. He also pointed out that the Centre had reduced the percentile score of the 2019-2020 batch after consultation with the Medical Council of India. He also relied upon the proceedings relating to the lowering of the minimum marks for the Super-specialty courses for the year 2019-2020 and for admission in Ayurveda, Yoga and Naturopathy, Unani, Siddha and Homoeopathy (AYUSH) – UG courses for the year 2020-2021. He contended that percentile is different from percentage and by lowering the percentile there would be no compromise of standards. He argued that 7,000 seats in the first year BDS course are vacant and the available infrastructure would be wasted.  

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ASG Senior Counsel Aishwarya Bhati vehemently opposed the submissions made by the petitioners and said the Centre had taken an informed decision as sufficient number of candidates are available for admissions to BDS course 2020-2021. She submitted that 7.71 lakh candidates were found to be eligible for filing up 82,000 MBBS and 28,000 BDS Course seats. She further highlighted the point that there are 2.77 lakh Dentists registered with the Dental Council of India. Taking into consideration the availability of 80% of Dentists, there is one Dentist for every 6080 persons which is better than the WHO norms of 1 : 7500. It was further contended by her that the seats in BDS course falling vacant is due to the candidates giving preference to other streams or their disability to pay exorbitant fee charged by the private colleges.  

The Court refused to accept the above contention made by the Central Government and said it was done without taking into account the fact that NEET (UG) 2020 was conducted for admission into different courses like MBBS, BDS, UG AYUSH and other medical courses. The total number of seats available for the academic year 2020-2021 for MBBS are 91,397, BDS 26,949 and AYUSH are 52,720 making it a total of 1,71,036 seats. Whereas, the NEET qualified candidates are 7,71,500. The ratio of seats available vis-a-vis eligible students is 1:4.5 and not 7. 

“The basis for the decision to not reduce minimum marks that there are sufficient eligible candidates is without considering the above vital facts. The decision of the first respondent was propelled by extraneous considerations like sufficient number of Dentists being available in the Country and the reasons for which students were not inclined to get admitted to BDS course which remits in the decision being unreasonable. Consideration of factors other than availability of eligible students would be the result of being influenced by irrelevant or extraneous matters,” said the Apex Court. 

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However, the Court has found force in the submissions of the ASG that exorbitant fees is the reason behind vacant seats in the Dental Medical Colleges and pointed out that only 265 out of 7,000 seats are vacant in government colleges. All the other unfilled seats are in private dental colleges. “The management of private dental colleges shall consider reducing the fee charged by them to encourage students to join the colleges,” said the Court.