Young doctors can’t be treated like football: Supreme Court on changes in NEET-SS exam

The top court said young doctors cannot be at the mercy of insensitive bureaucrats and cannot be treated like football.

Last week, the SC agreed to hear a plea challenging the alleged “last-minute” changes.

A bench of Justices DY Chandrachud and BV Nagarathna issued notices from the Centre, the National Board of Examinations (NBE) and the National Medical Commission (NMC) on a petition filed by 41 postgraduate doctors and sought their response.

The top court had also allowed the petitioners to file a short note of their written submissions.

The petitioners, who are qualified postgraduate doctors from across the country and aspire to become super experts by cracking NEET-SS 2021, have submitted that the exam dates were announced on July 23, but the changed pattern was made public in August. it was done. 31.

Senior advocate Shyam Divan, appearing for the petitioners, submitted that the NEET-SS 2021 examinations are to be held on November 13-14 and it is a fairly settled principle, including in academic matters, that once the calendar is announced, there is no question of any change in the scheme. Not there. .

The petition, filed through advocate Javedur Rahman, has sought quashing of the scheme of NEET-SS 2021 contained in the information bulletin dated August 31, as notified by the NBE and approved by the NMC, calling it “illegal”. “It was alleged to have happened. without any authority of law.

“As per the existing/earlier pattern, 40 marks used to come from the core subject and 60 marks were in respect of the two optional courses opted by the candidate. This was very important as the candidate himself would choose the areas of his interest and not only the theoretical knowledge of it Rather, they will be engaged in acquiring practical knowledge of it.

The petition claimed that the Information Bulletin has “completely replaced” the entrance examination and the NBE has said that the examination will be of “the level of the exit examination of a postgraduate”.

“Thus, postgraduates of various broad specialties can appear for a single super-specialty examination,” it said.

The petition said that in the earlier pattern there was one paper with 60 per cent questions from critical care, which is a super-specialty subject, and 40 per cent were mixed questions from all five broad specialties including general medicine and anesthesiology, which was a “level”. “Well sure. -Playground”.

“The proposed new pattern is forcing all the candidates of the above broad specialties to write a single paper which will have 100 per cent questions from General Medicine. There will be no questions from the broad specialties of the other four postgraduate branches. The pattern is not only for all those It is a waste of time and effort for those who have prepared for critical care, but also biased against some of the broader specialties.”

The petition has also sought restoration of the pattern of examination for NEET-SS 2021 and alternatively a direction that the change in scheme will not be implemented in this year’s examination due to time constraints but in 2022 and onwards. Will be done.

“Petitioners were surprised to see the scheme of NEET-SS exam in Part 4 which had a complete change without any advance notice, only two months were left for the exam, while the petitioners were preparing in terms of all the existing exams. pattern/scheme, there is no reason to think that any such drastic change would be done so close to the specified date and without valid authority i.e. Central Government being directed to do so,” it said.

It said that the petitioners, who have “the most challenging experiences” of their professional lives, who are at the forefront of the fight against COVID-19, have legitimately expected to appear for the NEET-SS 2021 exam during this period. That pattern is unchanged, just as it was in the last three years.

“Also, in view of such hasty and last minute decision to change the exam pattern, candidates who have recently completed Post Graduate (PG) will have an edge over the candidates who have completed PG sometime back and are working in units dedicated to super specialty with the aim of acquiring fundamental and practical knowledge in the field,” the petition stated.

With inputs from PTI