Supreme Court on Wednesday, on the plea of NEET-UG candidates challenging the Centre’s decision not to reduce the ‘cut-off’ marks for admission to NEET-BDS courses for the academic session 2021-22, for the academic session 2021-22. ‘Cut-off’ marks for admission to NEET-BDS courses for 22On Wednesday, the Center sought a response on the petition of NEET-UG candidates challenging the Centre’s decision to not reduce.
Justice D.Y. Chandrachud, Justice Sanjiv Khanna and Justice Surya Kant issued notice to the Center and sought its response on specific points such as the total number of eligible candidates after deducting admissions given to MBBS courses and ‘Bachelor of Dental Surgery (BDS)’ courses . The bench also asked the Center to apprise the reasons for not allowing reduction of ‘percentile’ in view of the available seats in government and private/deemed colleges.
Additional Solicitor General Aishwarya Bhati, appearing for the Centre, submitted a note to the bench and said that the results for all the vacancies have been declared and 111 seats have been allotted in government colleges. The bench said that the Dental Council of India in its letter dated April 6 has also accepted the fact that the seats are vacant and has said that out of 20,000 seats, only 9000 seats have been filled.
The Supreme Court had on April 29 asked the Center to consider its (Centre’s) decision not to reduce the cut-off marks for admissions in BDS. The court had said this while referring to more than 9000 seats being vacant for the course. The bench had also taken note of the fact that the last date for BDS admission has been extended from April 11 to May 15 and the Dental Council of India has recommended the Center to reduce the cut-off marks.
The Supreme Court is hearing a PIL filed by candidates who appeared in the National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test-Inter-Graduate (NEET-UG) desirous of pursuing dentistry.