NEET SS courses: SC refuses to interfere with Cut-Off marks

Supreme Court said that merit cannot be disregarded as far as a medical career is concerned as doctors deal with people's lives.

While refusing to lower the cut off percentile for admission to NEET Super-Speciality courses, Supreme Court has said that doctors have to deal with a patient's life and merit cannot be disregarded.

Observing the same, a bench of Justices DY Chandrachud and Surya Kant said that the court will not lower the percentile which is a matter of academic policy and cannot be faulted, as reported by NDTV.

“Candidates are sufficiently available for undertaking the counselling of vacant seats but the decision to not reduce the percentile is based on not compromising the merit. Question of whether the percentile should be reduced further is a matter of academic policy…in the circumstances, it is not possible for the court to entertain a plea for directing the reduction of the percentile,” said the bench.

If NEET SS cut-off percentile not lowered, seats will be wasted again

The petitioners' counsel was seeking to reduce the cut-off percentile for admission to NEET SS courses. He submitted that out of 940 seats in the academic year 2021-22, there are seats which are still vacant at a time when the country needs more doctors.

“In the previous academic year, the cut-off percentile was initially fixed at 50 but was reduced to 30 for 2019-20 and 45 for 2020-21. They have reduced cut-off marks for PG courses this year but not for the super-speciality courses. They cannot choose to reduce the cut-off marks for certain categories only,” he said.

Read more:

• NEET SS 2021 Counselling: Registration to start tomorrow at mcc.nic.in
• NEET SS 2021 counselling: Round-1 final result announced on mcc.nic.in