Noting that high scores are not the only measure of achievement, the Supreme Court on Thursday upheld its Jan. 7 order allowing other backward classes (OBCs) to remain in the 2021-22 NEET undergraduate and graduate admissions.
“The merits must be linked to the social and economic context. The role of reservations cannot be negated in making up for the lag. Reservations are not contradictory to merit, but promote the distributional consequences of social justice,” Justices DY Chandrachud and AS Bopanna said.
The court also announced that the Economically Weakened Section (EWS) criteria for NEET-PG admission will no longer apply and the existing criteria (Rs 8 lakh annual gross income cut-off) will apply for the current year of admission. Intervening at this stage will delay admissions for this year. Therefore, there are no reservation criteria for the 2021-22 batch to be reserved. We are still in the midst of a pandemic. Delays in recruiting physicians can affect the response to the pandemic,” the court said.
The bench said it would be impossible to pass an order on the merits of the policy without hearing from all parties about the material on which the reservations relied and what they identified as “the poorest and the poorest.”
Citing Articles 15(4) and 15(5) that require substantive equality, the Supreme Court stated that “competitive examinations do not reflect the excellence of an individual. They do not reflect the socioeconomic and cultural advantages acquired by certain classes.”
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