Government Agrees To Revert To Old NEET-SS pattern – Details Here
NEW DELHI: Put under the pump following scathing criticism from the
Supreme Court, the Centre, National Medical Commission and National Board for Education in medical sciences buckled and informed the court that the NEET-Super Speciality examinations will be as per the erstwhile pattern for the academic year 2021-22. The changed pattern will be applicable from the 2022-23 session onwards.
Additional solicitor general Aishwarya Bhati for the Centre and senior advocate Maninder Singh for NBE informed that in deference to the SC’s views, it has been decided to implement the new pattern of question and subject-wise distribution of marks, implementation of which from current academic session was under challenge, from the following academic years. As of now, the court decided not to go into the correctness of the new examination pattern.
As many as 41 MD doctors had approached the SC through advocate Javedur Rehman alleging that the government
changed the rules of the game after the starting whistle by completely altering the question pattern and subject-wise distribution of marks for the NEET-SS from what it was since 2018 and notifying the changes more than a month after the schedule of examination was announced. This, they said, jeopardised preparations of 12,000 doctors aspiring for super speciality courses.
Bhati informed the court that doubts of the SC about changes being made to benefit private medical colleges were unfounded as from among 414 colleges offering super speciality courses, 118 in government, and 296 in private sector and as many as 802 seats went vacant last year. Of these vacancies, 561 were in private and 241 in government medical colleges. “The decision to change the pattern was taken in the larger interest of the student community,” the ASG said.
A bench of Justices D Y Chandrachud, Vikram Nath and B V Nagarathna, which had given the government less than 24 hours to course correct and even warned of stepping in to set right the obduracy on its part, termed the Centre’s decision “very fair” and said since the erstwhile examination pattern has been restored, the court would not go into adjudication of the correctness of the new examination pattern.
However, the bench kept the window open for mounting legal challenges to the validity of the new examination pattern in future.
The bench had on Tuesday said, “You cannot be causing prejudice to the students. If there is a sense of obduracy (on the part of the authorities in not reverting to the old pattern of examination), the arms of law are long enough to deal with the obduracy. We have given you time till tomorrow to reform. NMC and NBE are not doing any favour to the students. We are giving you an opportunity to correct yourself.”
Justice Chandrachud had said NEET-SS is unlike other examinations. “The students prepare for years, right from their postgraduation in medicine days to get admission into super speciality courses after doing their masters. We know the private sector has invested money in offering the super speciality courses and their interest too has to be factored in while doing the balancing act. However, the interest of the students, who will be the torch bearers of advanced healthcare in India in future, cannot be sidelined,” he said.
The petitioners, preparing for the NEET-SS exam
scheduled for November 10-11, had complained the authorities had arbitrarily changed the earlier pattern of examination (40% questions from general medicine and 60% from the super speciality course applied for) to a new pattern (100% questions from general medicine).
