E-Paper
EWS quota in medical seats: Supreme Court to hear NEET-PG case today
A two-judge bench of justices DY Chandrachud and AS Bopanna will hear the petitions challenging reservation for other backward classes (OBCs) and economically weaker sections (EWS) in the all-India quota NEET-PG seats on Wednesday
Petitions challenging reservations in the national quota of seats in postgraduate medical courses will be heard in the Supreme Court on Wednesday after the central government persuaded it to urgently list the matter.
A two-judge bench of justices DY Chandrachud and AS Bopanna will hear the petitions challenging reservation for other backward classes (OBCs) and economically weaker sections (EWS) in the all-India quota NEET-PG seats on Wednesday.
Resident doctors who have qualified for postgraduate courses have been protesting the delay in counselling because the matter of reservations is pending in court.
Appearing for the Centre, solicitor general (SG) Tushar Mehta on Tuesday told a bench headed by chief justice of India NV Ramana that the protesting resident doctors had genuine concerns, which can only be addressed only if the matter is listed urgently.
“These matters relate to persons belonging to EWS. A statement was made by us that prevent further counselling for PG admissions. The resident doctors are protesting for this reason. Their concerns are genuine,” Mehta said.
He requested that, for a limited purpose, even a bench of two judges headed by justice Dhananjaya Y Chandrachud could be constituted to hear the pending petitions. On Monday, Mehta made a similar request before justice Chandrachud, seeking an early listing for Tuesday instead of the prefixed date of January 6. Justice Chandrachud assured him at the time that he would take this up with the chief justice.
Counselling is the process by which the successful candidate can exercise choice of institute based on his/her eligibility decided by the marks/rank secured. The decision of the government to introduce OBC and EWS reservation in medical and dental courses was made applicable to 50% PG and 15% UG AIQ seats. The Government announcement on July 29 had said, “This decision would benefit every year nearly 1500 OBC students in MBBS and 2500 OBC students in PG and also around 550 EWS students in MBBS and around 1000 EWS students in PG.”
A total of over 89,000 doctors had qualified in the NEET-PG examination conducted in September out of over 160,000 who appeared.
The matter pending before the court has been filed by resident doctors who have challenged a July 29, 2021 notification by the Centre introducing 27% OBC quota and 10% EWS quota in the NEET all-India quota seats. The petitions questioned the basis for applying the EWS quota, and said that such reservation would exceed the 50% benchmark set by the top court in its earlier decisions since there is also 22.5% reservation for Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribes.
In October, the top court raised doubts on whether EWS beneficiaries can be uniformly clubbed together as persons belonging to households with annual earnings below ₹8 lakh without considering the rural-urban divide, purchasing power in different regions, and other factors that vary across states. To quell these doubts, the Centre formed a three-member committee to revisit the criteria for identifying EWS in November, and put the counselling process of Neet-PG seats on hold.
The committee, which revisited the January 17, 2019 order passed by the Centre prescribing criteria to identify EWS, concluded that the ₹8 lakh limit is not “over-inclusive”. It, however, omitted the residential asset criterion prescribed under the government notification. The Centre presented the report to the Supreme Court along with its affidavit filed on January 1, supporting the recommendations of the committee.
The committee proposed that its recommendations can be implemented from the next admission or advertisement cycle, and that the existing criteria applicable for EWS be followed till then.
The resident doctors had gone on strike protesting the delay in NEET-PG counseling. Their 14-day strike ended last Friday after an assurance was given by the Union health ministry to come out with the NEET-PG counselling schedule soon after the hearing in the court on January 6. The federation of resident doctors’ association had even demanded cancellation of the FIRs registered against doctors after they were manhandled by Delhi police while marching to the Supreme Court as part of their protest. This demand was also accepted by the government.
