SC gives its judgement on the NEET 2021 super-speciality seats surrendered by TN

The Supreme Court has turned down a plea seeking a direction to add 92 "in-service quota seats" of NEET 2021 super-speciality seats, surrendered by Tamil Nadu, to the newly added seats. The plea was asking for these seats to be made available to all, irrespective of any candidates joining the seats through earlier rounds. But the court refused to entertain it and gave its decision on June 23, Thursday.

The case, however, had been presented at the top court earlier this year. On May 9, the court had allowed a mop-up round to be conducted for all the unfilled/stray/vacant super-speciality seats, subject to the condition that any doctor who had joined the seats already would not be allowed to join. Referring to this judgement, a vacation bench of Justices CT Ravikumar and Sudhanshu Dhulia spoke about the issue on Thursday.
"We cannot go against the judgement. When there's a specific direction, we cannot. When the law is laid down by this court, now merely because you're not a party to the judgement. We don't think that we should proceed with the contentions raised by the petitioner any further in light of order passed by this court. We have no hesitation to hold that petitioner is not entitled to seek such prayer in this direction. In short, such writ petition must fail and is dismissed," the Bench said, according to a PTI report.

The plea was filed by Kaviyarasan MP and others. On May 9, 2022, the counsel appearing on behalf of Tamil Nadu had told the apex court that the 92 unfilled seats of the in-service quota of the state shall be surrendered this year to the All India Quota (AIQ). And Additional Solicitor General Aishwarya Bhati had stated that a mop-up round would be held for completing the process of admission to super-speciality medical courses, occasioned by the surrender of 92 seats by Tamil Nadu to the AIQ.

The court had then directed, "The mop-up round shall be held for all the unfilled/stray/vacant super-speciality seats subject to the condition that any doctor who has joined a seat in the earlier round shall not be eligible for participating in the mop-up round. Since the mop-up round is being held, a suitable extension of time may be granted for completing the admissions," as reported by PTI.