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| Edited By: |Source: DNA |Updated: Apr 13, 2016, 08:59 AM IST
The Supreme Court Constitutional Bench’s order recalling an earlier judgment by a three-judge bench of the court which quashed the National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test (NEET) will help salvage the union government’s efforts to regulate medical education. The irony of the 2013 judgment, which was pronounced with a 2-1 majority, was that the Medical Council of India (MCI) had introduced the common test on the Supreme Court’s prodding in 2010. The NEET, until it was struck down, was meant to cover admission to all graduate and post-graduate courses to replace entrance tests conducted by state governments and private medical colleges.
Based on the tests, national and state rank lists were prepared, with 15 per cent of the total seats reserved for the national rank list and the remaining for those domiciled within a particular state. Interestingly, Justice Anil Dave, the lead judge on the Constitutional Bench, had pronounced the dissenting verdict in the 2013 verdict. In his recall order, which also asked the Supreme Court to reconsider the NEET matter afresh, Justice Dave noted that the 2013 verdict was pronounced without discussion between the three judges on the bench and that it had ignored a number of binding judicial precedents.
In 2013, Justices Altamas Kabir and Vikramjit Sen had ruled that the MCI’s mandate was restricted to laying down standards and ensuring excellence in medical education but not conducting examinations. The judges ruled that NEET deprived government and private medical colleges, including minority institutions enjoying constitutional protection, of their right to admit students through their own procedures, beliefs and dispensations. However, this view, did not consider how most private managements violate admission norms and the benefits of having a centralised testing system. By conducting their own entrance tests, many private institutions are able to select academically weaker but financially sound candidates and charge astronomically high sums as capitation fees from them. Among those most opposed to the NEET were minority institutions, whose admission norms have another layer of opacity in the form of quotas for management-sponsored candidates on the basis of religion.
In contrast, NEET was a much neater system where candidates had an equal opportunity to aspire for medical seats across the country, while the fragmentation of the tests on the basis of state boundaries and private managements denied many aspirants a level playing ground. In his minority judgment in 2013, Justice Dave noted that NEET spared state governments and educational institutions of the headache of conducting entrance tests. He also rightly observed that “except some institutions having some oblique motive behind selecting students who could not prove their mettle in the common examination, all educational institutes should feel happy to get a suitable and eligible lot of students, without making any effort for selecting them.” He also noted that minority institutions did not lose their discretion in selecting candidates of their choice through NEET because nothing stopped them from giving weightage on the basis of religion, caste or region to meet the objectives of the institution related to minority upliftment.
Among those opposed to the NEET system were private minority managements like Christian Medical College, Vellore, who admit nearly 85 per cent of the students through community and church-sponsored networks.
However, non-minority private institutions complain that they are forced to follow government rules while minority institutions are a law unto themselves. It is for the Centre, the respective state governments, and the MCI to notify rules regarding admissions to these institutions and address the contesting claims of minority protection and undue benefits for minorities. At the end of the day, India needs better doctors and a common national exam like the NEET is more likely to set better standards than those administered by states and individual medical colleges.
