New Delhi: The Supreme Court yesterday set aside a Medical Council of India notification mandating a common National Entrance Eligibility Test (NEET) for both undergraduate and postgraduate medical and dental courses in government and private institutions.
In a majority judgment, Chief Justice Altamas Kabir and Justice Vikramajit Sen said: “We also have no hesitation in holding that the Medical Council of India is not empowered under the 1956 Act to actually conduct the NEET.”
“...we have no hesitation in holding that the ‘Regulations on Graduate Medical Education (Amendment) 2010 (Part II)’ and the ‘Post Graduate Medical Education (Amendment) Regulation, 2010 (Part II)’, whereby the Medical Council of India introduced the single National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test and the corresponding amendments in the Dentists Act, 1948, are ultra vires the provisions of Articles 19(1)(g), 25, 26(a), 29(1) and 30(1) of the Constitution,...”, the majority judgment said.
Addressing the practical aspect of holding a single National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test, Chief Justice Kabir, pronouncing the judgment, said, “In a single window competition, the disparity in educational standards in different parts of the country cannot ensure a level playing field.”
The court said that there was “no controversy that the standard of education all over the country was not the same and each state has its own system and pattern of education, including the medium of instruction”.
“It cannot also be disputed that children in the metropolitan areas enjoy greater privileges than their counterparts in most of the rural areas as far as education is concerned, and the decision of the central government to support a single entrance examination would perpetuate such divide in the name of giving credit to merit,” the judgment said.
IANS
