HC Issues notice on Plea challenging common NEET for BHMS course

A division bench of Acting Chief Justice Vipin Sanghi, Justice Navin Chawla, issued notice to the Ministry of AYUSH, National Commission for Homeopathy, National Testing Agency, and others and listed the matter for further hearing on March 30.

The bench has also passed an interim order on the basis of the February 25 judgment, where some colleges were provisionally allowed to admit students in Homeopathy courses without stressing upon NEET qualification, if any surplus seats were left after all rounds of counselling, adds Live law.

The recent plea was filed by a group of Homeopathic medical colleges, who questioned the legal validity of Section 14 of the National Commission for Homeopathy Act, 2020 along with the NEET (UG) Information Bulletin dated 13.07.2021 as the same asks the Homeopathy candidates to mandatorily qualify NEET in order to secure admission, just like those willing to pursue Modern Scientific Medicines.

Also Read: HC allows admission to 100 BHMS seats at TN Homeopathic Medical College after Centre denies permission

As per the latest media report by Live Law, the petitioners contended that NEET has been designed for modern scientific medicine courses. On the other hand, Homeopathy courses operate in a different field and that is why, NEET cannot be made applicable for Homeopathy.

In order to support their argument, the colleges relied on the Karnataka High Court judgment, by which the petitioner colleges were allowed to admit students to the vacant seats after all rounds of counselling, without putting emphasis on NEET qualifications.

Further, they referred to the Madhya Pradesh High Court judgment in the case of Rani Dullaiya Smriti Homeopathy Medical College and Hospital and Others v. State of Madhya Pradesh and Others.

They argued that NEET was created by a statute related to modern scientific medicine courses and therefore, it cannot be made applicable for other courses including Homeopathy.

"NEET has been created by NMC Act which itself is applicable only to the Medical Institutions that grant degrees, diplomas or licenses in Modern Scientific medicine, which is different from Medical Institutions that grants degrees, diplomas or licenses in Ayurveda, Unani, Siddha or 20 Homeopathy Medicines…if the main statute has itself restricted the scope of NEET to the extent of Modern Scientific medicine, then it cannot be extended to any other course by way of another Act without there being any authorization or amendment in the main Act for doing the same," stated the plea.

The plea further pointed out how Homeopathic courses were poles apart from Modern Scientific Medicine courses and there is also a huge different in the subject that is taught to students to both these branches of medicine.

Further the petitioners pointed out that even though the NEET 2021 Information Bulletin, issued by National Testing Agency, notified a common entrance test for admission to MBBS, BDS, BAMS, BSMS, BUMS and BHMS courses, a separate criterion is not provided for admission into Homeopathy courses.

Apart from this, the plea also questioned the NEET ranking system based on the percentile. They pointed out that Percentile score depends on the comparative ranking with the top scorer and it doesn't consider merit on the basis of marks obtained by the candidates.

As a result, the students aiming only to get admitted in the BHMS courses have to secure admission on the basis of comparison of marks with those aiming to get into Modern Medicine courses.

So, the merit list gets prepared on the basis of comparative percentile or the students belonging to two heterogeneous categories i.e Modern Medicine courses and BHMS courses, the plea pointed out. Therefore, the students who score less than 50 percentile and were otherwise qualified get disqualified and debarred from such a common merit list.

Referring to this fact, the plea urged, "Even if a common NEET is conducted, the 15 scores of the candidates who wish to pursue BHMS Courses may be ranked separately from that of the candidates who wish to pursue their career in modern medicine."

Filed through Advocates Animesh Kumar, Nishant Kumar, Shweta Singh & Rishabh Gupta, the plea will next be heard on March 30.