Filling 1,456 vacant seats of NEET 2021 will disrupt PG 2022 Counselling: Centre to Supreme Court

Earlier, the Supreme Court had criticised the Medical Counselling Committee for leaving 1,456 seats vacant of NEET 2021.

Pic Credit: File Photo

New Delhi: The Central Government on Wednesday filed an affidavit in the Supreme Court stating that the filling up of 1,456 vacant seats of NEET 2021 will disrupt the whole process for the upcoming counselling session NEET-PG 2022. The Centre's response came in an affidavit filed on a plea seeking to conduct a Special Stray Round of counselling to allow the candidates to contest for the vacant seats which are available after the conduct of the stray vacancy round of All India Quota (AIQ).

Early on the day, the Supreme Court asked the Centre and Medical Counselling Committee (MCC) to file an affidavit on a plea seeking to conduct a Special Stray Round of counselling to allow the candidates to contest for the vacant seats which are available after the conduct of stray vacancy round of All India Quota (AIQ).

Centre apprised the top court that at present, the software that was being used for conducting online counselling 2021 is closed and a refund of the security deposit for participation in PG counselling 2021 is also initiated.

Centre, in its affidavit also mentioned that NEET-PG 2022 examination was conducted on May 21, 2022, and the results were announced on June 1 by the examination conducting body i.e. National Board of Examination.

NEET-PG 2022 counselling, as it is likely to be conducted in the month of July 2022. Hence, the Centre said that the petitioner`s plea is at a belated stage, as it will disrupt the whole process for the upcoming counselling session NEET-PG 2022.

The Centre submitted that counselling for two academic sessions cannot run concurrently. It also apprised the court of the fact that the Medical Counselling Committee is only for counselling conducting authority of Medical seats contributed by the participating Colleges and National Medical Commission (NMC) is the executive body for the creation of rules, policies and schedules for Medical Counselling.

Earlier, 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.