Dismissed : Petition Challenging the Lowering of cut-off in medical PG courses

New Delhi: The Delhi High Court while dismissing a plea for withdrawal of the Government’s decision of 15% reduction in the cut off percentile for postgraduate seats, came down strongly petitioners for involving the prime minister’s office as a party to the cases filed before it.

The petitioner and Professor of Surgery at a medical college had sought a directive from the Prime Minister for an investigation into alleged corrupt practices by the Health Ministry in relation to the percentile issue. The government’s decision to lower percentile for admission to postgraduate courses had come in response to complaints registered by privately run medical colleges that a large number of seats were going vacant due to qualifying percentile being too high.

Dismissing the plea, the court observed that there was “not a single factual averment as to what was wrong with the decision of lowering the percentile which was taken by the ministry on recommendations of the Medical Council of India”. A bench of Acting Chief Justice Gita Mittal and Justice C Hari Shankar raised a categoric objection against the petitioner for having charged the government for alleged corruption last week.

“Other than making a bald allegation of corruption against authorities without any specific details, the writ petition does not disclose any ground on which the decision of the government can be challenged,” the bench observed.

“Admittedly, the Prime Minister’s Office has no role in the matter at all so far as the decision-making is concerned. Such practice must be deprecated,” it stated.

Postgraduate admissions in medical colleges in India are based on performance in the National Eligibility and Entrance Test-PG (NEET-PG).In other words, PG admissions are merit-based.

A candidate wanting admission in any postgraduate course has to obtain a minimum 50th percentile marks in NEET-PG; reserved categories, meanwhile have to secure 40 percent marks to be eligible for admissions reported TOI.

Persons with disabilities, the third category have to be in the 45% slot to be considered eligible for PG admission.