After Delhi, Now Rajasthan HC to decide on MCI regulations on Biology for NEET

Jaipur: 2 MBBS seats at medical colleges in Rajasthan are to be kept vacant following a petition filed by two NEET qualifiers who cleared the entrance exam without having taken Biology as an subject at the 10+2 level.

A direction to this effect came from the Rajasthan High Court in the face of the Delhi High Court, giving relief to many students who took Biology/Biotechnology as an additional subject and were not granted admission by medical colleges. The Rajasthan court will now decide whether similar relief can be given to students in Rajasthan or not.

In both the case, admission refusal by these colleges to had come in the face of the MCI Regulations that debar all candidates who have passed 10+2 level with Biology/Biotechnology as an additional subject whether simultaneously or subsequently at 10+2 level.

Before the Rajasthan HC is the case of petitionersNeha Chaudhary and Suraj Bansal who had successfully cleared NEET entrance and also had participated in the mandatory counselling for admissions to the MBBS course. The petitioners despite having been allotted seats in the Mahatma Gandhi Medical College, Jaipur, and Medical College Dungarpur, respectively, by the UG Admission Board were denied admission by the said colleges .

The denial came due to them not fulfilling Regulation 4(2)(a) of the Under Graduate Medical Regulations, 1997. The samecriterion, however, had been set aside by the Delhi High Court that argued that continuous study of biology for two years is not required at the senior secondary level and that the subject could be cleared subsequently too.

Delhi High Court waiving aside the MCI stance in an attempt to provide relief in the Tanishq Gangwar and many other sets of medical aspirants case has categorically in an order passed stated that all students who have qualified their 10+2 exam with additional subjects of biology either at one go, or after a year and have also cleared their NEET exam and counselling are to be considered eligible for being given an MBBS seat in any of the medical colleges across India.

Read Also: Delhi HC Slams Medical Council of India for Arbitrary Clauses on Biology for NEET

Keeping in view the relief granted by the Delhi High Court to petitioners having cleared the 10+2 exam with Biology as an additional subject simultaneously or afterwards, the Rajasthan High Court noted that "the division bench order of the Delhi High Court does not prima facie entail a conclusion that Regulation 4(2)(a) of the Regulations of 1997 despite being struck down as discriminatory and arbitrary would yet be operative in respect of other students not before the Delhi High Court".

However, the court directed the "seats allotted to the petitioners and those similarly placed by the UG Admission Board be kept vacant till the next date on August 25" since if the allocated seats are allowed to be filled up by respective medical colleges "it would leave the petitioner without any recourse or remedy, " reported TOI