NEET-PG: SC allows admissions with 27% quota for OBCs, 10% for EWS
The Supreme Court on Friday, has given nod to NEET-PG admissions with 27% quota for OBCs, 10% for economically weaker sections for 2021-22. It has also decided to accept the recommendations of the Ajay Bhushan Pandey committee and stick to Rs 8-lakh criteria for identifying Economically Weaker Sections for the current admission cycle.
A two-judge bench of Justices D Y Chandrachud and A S Bopanna had concluded hearing on the matter on Thursday and reserved its verdict. Counseling for the NEET-PG has remained suspended due to the pendency of the petitions.
The Ajay Bhushan Pandey Committee, also comprising Member Secretary ICSSR V K Malhotra and Principal Economic Advisor Sanjeev Sanyal, was set up to analyse feasibility of the Rs 8 lakh limit after the SC in previous hearings sought to know what exercise was undertaken before fixing the limit. The committee recommended to retain the Rs 8 lakh limit for NEET-PG (AIQ) for the current admission cycle and to adopt recommendations on how to apply the income limit from the next admission cycle.
The bench had pointed out that Rs 8 lakh was also the limit fixed for the OBC quota, and said people from that community “suffer from social and educational backwardness” but “under the Constitutional scheme, the EWS are not socially and educationally backward”. Therefore, by having a similar scheme for both, “you are making unequals equals”, it had said.
