Supreme Court Strained on Common Counselling for PG medicine from 2021

The Supreme Court on May 26, 2020 has stated that the National Board of Education (NBE) must consider conducting a “common or single online counselling' for admission in Post Graduate Medical Courses resulting in degrees and diplomas and therefore the seats in DNB (Diplomate of National Board) courses within the country from next session onwards.

However, the bench including Justices UU Lalit and Dinesh Maheshwari didn't order NBE to conduct the common counselling for the academic year 2020. The NBE conducts the National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test for Post Graduate (NEET PG) examination.

“Since the petitioners have approached the court at a stage where the whole process has been undertaken and lots of candidates are allocated various courses within the Counselling, we don't deem it appropriate to pass any direction for this year. However, going by the assertions made within the response filed by the Medical Council of India, we may observe that a standard counselling or single online counselling within the coming years would definitely lookout of any similar grievance,” said the bench in its judgment.

The main objective of NBE was to reinforce the standard of medical education. It is an autonomous body under the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare. DNB may be a postgraduate or postdoctoral diploma course where candidates are trained for 3 years. The apex court has considered the submission of NBE and stated that the authority was in an agreement so as to conduct the common counselling from subsequent session onwards.

“Consequently, while refusing to pass any directions in thus far because the present year cares, we hope that the authorities are going to be ready to have common counselling for DNB PG seats alongside all Post Graduate seats resulting in Degrees and Diplomas for coming years starting with NEET PG 2021 Examination,” said Apex court, reports PTI.

The verdict of conducting common counselling came after four medical students filed a plea to the Centre, NBE, et al. for filling up seats within the PG medical and DNB courses. However, the apex court didn't allow the plea for common counselling for the year 2020 taking the submissions of NBE and therefore the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare into consideration