A petition has been filed by the All India Medical Students Association (AIMSA) in the Supreme Court to postpone the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test for Postgraduate (NEET-PG) 2022 exam. The exam is scheduled for May 21 and AIMSA is citing the clash with ongoing counselling for NEET PG 2021 as the reason behind filing the petition.
"On behalf of All India Medical Students Association (AIMSA) we have moved Supreme Court of India against scheduled examination of NEET -PG 2022 dated 21st May, 2022. The aspirants raised own grievances due to mismatch / clashing of dates in ongoing counselling for NEET-PG 2021," Advocate Sandeep Tiwari, the lawyer of AIMSA, posted on Twitter.
Aditionally, there is an ongoing campaign being run on social media by several medical students institing that NEET-PG 2022 be postponed. There are associations who have written to President Ram Nath Kovind, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Health Minister Mansukh Mandaviya regarding the same.
It was only last month that the Supreme Court had dismissed a plea to extend the internship deadline, which is July 31, for NEET-PG. It said that this will end up disrupting the whole academic schedule, as stated in a report by LiveLaw.in.
Students were seeking an extension because they weren't able to perform the internship since they were busy with COVID-19 duties. It may be recalled that the original deadline of March 31 was extended to July 31 by the Centre. This was done in line with the earlier direction by the court to consider the representation of students, LiveLaw.in reported.
NEET-PG 2021 has been postponed several times owing to the second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic. Originally slated for April 2021, the 2021 PG exam was conducted only on September 11, 2021.
The NEET-PG counselling was pushed because a case was pending in the Supreme Court challenging the implementation of EWS-OBC reservation in the All India Quota (AIQ). It was only in January 2022 first week that the top court permitted the counselling process to commence based on the existing criteria for EWS-OBC reservation in AIQ.
There were many cases which were filed against the process of counselling as well. On March 31, the court cancelled the mop-up round counselling in view of anomalies in the addition of 146 additional seats. It directed the holding of a special round for the newly added seats.
There are a few cases that are pending in high courts as well, challenging the counselling process for State Quota.
