New Delhi: Supreme Court once again agreed to hear the plea by NEET BDS 2021 aspirants who have now moved to the court challenging the recent order by the Union Health Ministry, which refused to lower the cutoff percentile for BDS admissions for the academic year 2021-2022.
Approaching the Apex Court bench comprising of Justice Chandrachud, the counsel for the aspirants, Senior Advocate Paramjit Singh Patwalia sought urgent listing of the plea. The bench has listed the matter for further hearing on Wednesday.
This comes after recently the top court bench had directed the Union Health Ministry for fresh consideration on the matter of lowering the cutoff percentile for the BDS aspirants.
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As per the latest media report by Live Law, such a direction was given by the top court bench on May 1 after it took note of the fact that the last date for BDS admissions had been extended from April 11 to May 15 and the Executive Committee of the Dental Council of India (DCI) in its meeting dated 06.04.2022, had also recommended the centre for reducing the qualifying percentile.
It was the contention of the aspirants that on the basis of the eligibility criteria as mentioned in the BDS Regulations, the Petitioners along with thousands of other students failed to obtain the minimum qualifying marks and as a result they were not held to be eligible for admission into BDS courses.
To substantiate their claims made in the petition, the aspirants referred to the decision taken by the Executive Committee of DCI on April 6 when the Committee had recommended for reducing the cutoff percentile for NEET BDS 2021 by 10th percentile for each of the categories.
At this outset, the BDS aspirants also sought permission from the court for directing the authorities to conduct Mop Up round of counselling for the vacant seats after the publication of revised cutoff percentile.
It should be mentioned in this context that last year the Supreme Court had set aside the Centre's decision as it had provided relief to the BDS aspirants by lowering the cutoff by 10th percentile.
At that time, the bench had held, "If reducing minimum marks amounts to lowering the standards, the first Respondent would not do so for super specialty courses. We are in agreement with Mr. Maninder Singh learned Senior Counsel for the Petitioners that lowering the minimum marks and reducing percentile for admission to the first-year BDS course would not amount to lowering the standards of education."
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