Recntly, the Supreme Court bench comprising Justices MR Shah and Aniruddha Bose in the case of Dr Ashima Goel and ors vs Medical Counselling Committee and ors heard a plea filed by medical students seeking a special stray round of counselling to fill vacant postgraduate (PG) medical seats under the All-India Quota (AIQ) in the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test 2021 (NEET 2021)
On Monday, the Court directed the petitioners’ counsel to serve a copy of the petition on the respondents’ counsel and scheduled the matter for hearing on June 8. The petition filed on behalf of 23 doctors also requested that the Central Government disclose the number of vacant AIQ seats following an earlier stray counselling round.
The petitioners had participated in rounds 1 and 2 of AIQ Counselling and State Quota Counselling, which were followed by All India mop-up and State Mop-up rounds, according to the plea filed by advocate Milind Kumar, instructed by Dubey Law Associates. However, they have yet to secure a seat in any of the rounds.
However, the petitioners discovered that there are still vacant seats under the AIQ through responses to a Right to Information (RTI) request. Following that, representations were made to concerned authorities in order to conduct an additional stray round in the interests of students and colleges, but to no avail, according to the plea.
The petition therefore requested that the Supreme Court issue a writ of mandamus
1) to directing the respondent, Medical Counselling Committee (MCC), to provide the exact number of vacant seats following the completion of the stray vacancy round of AIQ;
2) to direct the respondent to conduct a special stray round of counselling to allow candidates to compete for the vacant seats left after the AIQ stray vacancy round;
The petition argued that because similar stray rounds were held for undergraduate medical seats, not doing so for PG courses is unjust and arbitrary.
