New Delhi: A petition has been filed in the Delhi High Court seeking an order to quash Section 14 of the challenged National Commission for Indian System of Medicine (NCISM) Act, 2020, which mandates an unified NEET for admission to all medical disciplines like as MBBS, BDS, BAMS, BSMS, BUMS, and BHMS.
On Monday, The bench of Justice DN Patel and Justice Jyoti Singh issued a notice to Union of India Ministry of Ayurveda, Yoga and Naturopathy, Unani, Siddha and Homoeopathy (AYUSH), National Commission for Indian System of Medicine, National Commission for Homoeopathy, National Testing Agency and others and tagged the matter with other similar pending matters.
The Court set a hearing date of March 30, 2022, for the issue to be heard again. The petition argued that even if a similar NEET is conducted, the scores of applicants interested in pursuing AYUSH Courses should be compared separately from those interested in pursuing a career in mainstream medicine. In other words, when deciding an individual's All-India Rank and producing the common merit list, separate percentiles may be calculated for students who choose to enroll in AYUSH Courses.
The petition have been moved by six students who appeared in NEET are intending to pursue AYUSH Courses in Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh stated that, despite of petitioners being qualified students for pursuing AYUSH Courses, the Petitioners may end up without getting admissions in colleges because of the common NEET examination for all the medical courses.
The plea also mentioned that in the definition of medicine under the Act, from which NEET has been created that the medicine means Modern Scientific medicine which is quite different from Indian Medicine, and Medical Institution which grants degrees, diplomas or licences in Modern Scientific medicine will be construed as Medical Institution to which NEET can be applicable.
Advocate Animesh Kumar appeared for petitioners submitted that by notifying a common NEET examination for MBBS/BDS as well as AYUSH courses, the respondents have completely overlooked the pivotal fact that both these courses operate in different fields and there are fundamental differences between the framework of both the courses.
