NO NEET PG 2023 Postponement: Supreme Court

The Supreme Court has dismissed all petitions aiming for NEET PG 2023 postponement, and with this, the aspirants will now have to appear on the scheduled date, March 05, 2023.

A bench containing Justice S Ravindra Bhat presided over the matter and issued the order.

The matter of NEET PG postponement has been disturbing thousands of aspirants as, despite several requests, the management, including NBE and the health ministry, have been denying postponing the examination.

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The aspirants have been trying for an exam date extension to decrease the gap of around five months between the exam date and the date of MBBS training completion.

Union Health Minister Mansukh Mandaviya had also defined in the Parliament that NEET PG 2023 exam would be held on the scheduled date, i.e. March 05, 2023.

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Later, a few candidates approached the High Court of Telangana, Hyderabad, praying for the delay. Many interns could not be noted earlier as their training completion date was beyond the earlier declared cut-off date for completing an internship. However, the same was extended to 11.08.2023 vide notice dated 07.02.2023.

After the HC directions, the petitioners submitted their representation to NMC requesting to delay NEET PG 2023 by three months so that they can prepare for the said exam. A similar representation was presented to the Director of Medical Education, with a copy to Chairman, NMC, requesting to delay the NEET PG 2023 examination by 12-14 weeks.

However, their representation could not be granted on the following grounds:-

a. The date of an exam was already fixed six months in advance, and a notice in this regard was placed on the website on 16.09.2022

b. Initially, when the cut-off date for completion of the training was 31st March 2023, more than 2 lakh aspirants had already registered for the exam and had not objected regarding the exam date.

c. After representations from various State Governments/Universities, the cut-off date for internship was extended to 11.08.2023. Only 5000 additional applications were received, constituting about 2% of the candidates who will take an exam. Postponing the exam will create a problem for 98% of the candidates who have been studying/preparing for the NEET PG Exam and have represented not to delay the date of the exam.

d. All the trials are over, and the exam will be conducted at more than 800 centres for more than 2 lakh students.

e. The Academic Session is scheduled to be started in July 2023 or as early as possible after counselling.

Based on the 

As mentioned above, the NMC released its speaking order on Friday, February 24 and disposed of the representations.

The same day, through the hearing of petitions before the (SC) Supreme Court, the bench delayed the matter and pursued responses from the NBE.

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Today’s hearing started with the top court handing over the compilation and an annual report for the 2017-18 academic year.

Senior Advocate Gopal Sankaranarayanan, appearing for the petitioners, presented that out of the over 2 lakh aspirants who have registered for NEET-PG, nearly 1.3 lakh students are those who finished their graduation in previous years and who could not make it via PG in the previous terms. “ The previous practice in the past is that the gap between the training deadline and the exam is never more than 2 months,” he said.

Justice Bhat also sought to know whether the internship deadline was extended earlier. “You are saying they should not have postponed the internship. How many times have they postponed the date in the past?”

Notifying the gap between internships and exam dates, GS informed the bench, “They did last year also. On pg L of the SLP, there is a table showing the exam date and the counselling date. In all, there is just a two month gap. This time it is almost a five month gap.”

Considering all the arguments, the SC has ultimately dismissed all the petitions seeking to postpone the NEET PG 2023 exam scheduled on March 5.

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