'Playing with the future': SC slams Medical Counselling Committee over vacant NEET PG seats

The Supreme Court on Wednesday asked the Medical Counselling Committee (MCC) to ensure that not a single NEET PG seat should go waste while slamming the board for "playing with the future" of medical students. The court said that not a single must remain unfilled, saying that you are "playing with the future of students". The apex court has also asked the MCC to file an affidavit on the plea seeking to conduct a Special Stray Round of counselling to allow the candidates to participate in the vacant seats which are available after the conduct of the stray vacancy round of All India Quota (AIQ).

The vacation bench of Justices MR Shah and Aniruddha Bose asked counsel for MCC and Centre to file an affidavit today during the course of the day explaining why seats were vacant. The court listed the matter tomorrow for further hearing. During the hearing, the court expressed dismay to hear that 1,456 seats have remained vacant. The counsel appearing for MCC sought time to file an affidavit regarding this. The MCC counsel also said that 2022 counselling will get delayed and there will be a cascading effect. The court sought to know why there is no streamlining process and questioned, "Do you know the stress level of students?"

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The court also expressed disappointment when it came to know that the MCC was aware of the vacant seats in May and asked, "What will you get by keeping seats vacant when we need doctors and super-specialists?" The court was hearing a plea seeking to direct the Respondent--Medical Counselling Committee (MCC) to conduct a Special Stray Round of counselling to allow the candidates to participate in the vacant seats which are available after the conduct of stray vacancy round of All India Quota (AIQ). The petitioners were represented by advocate Milind Kumar Advocate.

The Petitioners appeared in NEET-PG 2021-22 and participated in Rounds 1 and 2 of All India Quota (AIQ) Counselling and State Quota Counselling which was followed by All India Mop-Up and State Mop-Up Rounds and was concluded on May 7, 2022 by Medical Counselling Committee post the All India Stray Vacancy Round. The petitioners were not able to secure a seat in any of the rounds. They claimed that they are aggrieved by the counselling process which was conducted by MCC in a manner that all the vacant seats were not a part of the stray vacancy round of the counselling.

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They said that the cause of action for filing the present Writ Petition arose on May 11 2022 when the Petitioners received a reply to the RTI they had filed wherein it was stated that "At the time of online allotment process all medical/ dental post-graduate seats were exhausted but due to non-joining, resignation, and non-reported some seats remained vacant". However, official data has not been provided, the petitioners said. Hence, the petitioners have sought to direct MCC to provide the exact number of vacant seats after the conduct of the stray vacancy round of AIQ and to conduct a Special Stray Round of counselling to allow the candidates to participate in the vacant seats which are available after the conduct of stray vacancy round of AIQ.

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