The Supreme Court affirmed its January 7 ruling granting reservation for Other Backward Classes (OBC) in the NEET undergraduate and postgraduate admissions for 2021-22, noting that high scores are not the only requirement for merit.‘Merit must be viewed in the context of one’s social and economic circumstances. Reservation has an important role to play in overcoming backwardness. Reservation is not incompatible with merit; rather, it promotes the distributive effects of social justice’, according to a bench of Justices DY Chandrachud and AS Bopanna.
The court also ruled that the Economically Weaker Sections (EWS) criteria for admission to NEET-PG will not be suspended, and that the present criteria (a cut-off of Rs 8 lakh gross yearly income) shall apply to the current admission year. ‘Judicial intervention at this stage would have delayed admissions for this year. Therefore no stay on reservation criteria for 2021-22 batch. We are still in the midst of a pandemic. Delay in recruitment of doctors would impact pandemic response,’ the court said. The bench stated that it would be impossible to give an order on the merits of the policy without hearing all parties about the material relied on for reservation and the identification of ‘poor and poorest.’
Post Your Comments