Bhopal (Madhya Pradesh): The Supreme Court has come to the rescue of seven NEET candidates who were denied admission into MBBS course under the Unreserved - Government Schools (UR-GS) quota last year. The apex court has now directed state Medical Education department to accommodate these seven candidates from the state in 2024-25 academic session.
A two-judge bench, comprising Justices B.R. Gavai and K.V. Viswanathan, gave the above-mentioned direction on Tuesday setting aside MP High Court’s Gwalior bench orders of December 22,2023 and January 12, 2024.
The bench said, "Undisputedly, the appellants who were meritorious and who could have been admitted against the UR-GS category were denied admission on account of an erroneous application of the methodology in applying horizontal and vertical reservation. It is also not in dispute that many of the students, who secured much less marks than the appellants have been admitted against the UR-GS seats".
Earlier, the appellants had moved High Court praying that meritorious students of reserved category from government schools be allotted MBBS seats of unreserved category government school quota before being released to open category.
However, the petition was rejected with high court maintaining that the petitioner would not succeed in obtaining admission even if the UR-GS candidates allegedly lower in merit to the petitioner were not given admission. Thus, in view of the above the claim of the petitioners of being allotted a seat against the unreserved GS quota cannot be entertained or accepted. The petitioners had not made out any case for interference in the matter, in view of which the petitions deserve to be and were hereby dismissed, said the high court.
The amendment
By a notification dated May 10, 2023 the state government has amended the MP Chikitsa Shiksha Pravesh Rules, 2018 thus creating a Government School Quota (GS Quota) of 5% of the total seats for students who have studied in Government School from class 6th to class 12th or students who have taken admission under the RTE Act and have studied from class 1st to 8th in private schools and thereafter studied in Government school from class 9th to 12th.
