Doctors move Supreme Court against NEET SS 2022 exam pattern

New Delhi: Challenging the changed exam pattern of National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test Super Specialty (NEET-SS) 2022 examination, the aspirants of the entrance test, belonging to MD Radiation Oncology and MD Anaesthesiology, have approached the Supreme Court.

The grievance of the petitioner doctors are against the new pattern for the NEET SS examination that consists of 150 questions from the general/basic component of the primary feeder broad specialty subject and from all sub- specialty/systems/component of that primary feeder broad specialty subject. Besides, the petitioners are also upset by National Medical Commission's draft Postgraduate Medical Education Regulations, 2021, which proposes deletion of MD radiation oncology/radiotherapy as an eligible feeder specialty qualification for the super specialty course of DM Medical Oncology.

They have sought directions from the top court for restraining NBE not to exclude MD Radiation Oncology/ MD Radiotherapy from the eligible feeder specialties for the Super Specialty courses of DM Medical Oncology for NEET SS 2022.

Apart from seeking directions upon the National Board of Examinations (NBE), the petitioner doctors have also sought directions to restore the scheme/pattern of the exam.

Also Read: NEET SS 2021: Doctors Move Supreme Court Objecting to Abrupt Last Minute Changes

Medical Dialogues had earlier reported that last year the Central Government had introduced last minute changes in the NEET SS 2021 exam pattern and challenging the same doctors had approached the Supreme Court. The counsel appearing for the petitioner doctors had argued that the last-minute changes in the exam pattern put the students from disciplines other than general medicine at a disadvantageous position. In the previous pattern, 60 per cent marks were allotted to questions in the super-specialty while 40 per cent from feeder courses. However, as per the changed pattern, the entirety of the questions for the critical care super specialty would be drawn from general medicines.

At that time, the top court had slammed the authorities for the last-minute changes and ultimately the Government had decided to introduce the changes from the next year onwards.

As per the latest media report by Live Law, now the doctors have once again moved to the Apex Court and argued that the proposal of deleting MD (Radiation Oncology) as one of the eligible feeder specialty qualifications for the superspeciality course of DM Medical Oncology has shocked the entire fraternity of Radiation Oncologists in India.

The plea termed the changed pattern to be "arbitrary, illogical, unreasonable and highly partial," and the doctors further argued that this change would result in complete waste of time for candidates who have been preparing for a super speciality subject for years.

"Having a uniform qualifying percentile when the question paper is identical for every candidate is perfectly logical, but to do so when the question papers admittedly differ across groups, yet conferring an undue comparative advantage upon some of them as delineated above, is patently unfair. To have the same qualifying percentile for a candidate of MD (General Medicine) and MD (Anaesthesia) towards admission in DM Critical Care or for a candidate of MD (General Medicine) and MD (Radiation Oncology) towards admission in DM (Oncology) would be the definition of perversity and violation of the guarantee against non-arbitrariness protected under Article 14 of the Constitution of India," stated the plea.

Also Read: NEET SS 2021 exam pattern change: NBE Proposes to Defer test to January 2022