Centre brings Ordinance to put NEET on hold

The decision was taken after protests from a number of states and medical colleges over Supreme Court order making NEET a must for all states.

However, the Ordinance to defer the top court’s order would not prove to be beneficial for private medical colleges. 

According to a health ministry official, the Ordinance cleared by the Union Cabinet, which was chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, is not about rejecting the NEET pattern of examination, rather states as well as students have been given 12 months’ time to get ready for the single entrance 

examination.

“Even after the Ordinance, the second edition of NEET would happen as per the schedule as private medical colleges would have to admit students on the basis of NEET scorecard. There is no compulsion for states to take NEET qualified students as after today’s decision, they would select medical aspirants on the basis of examinations conducted by respective state medical boards,” the official added.

In total, there are 22 state medical board examinations conducted by states in the country for which lakhs of students appear annually.

The decision has been taken before Modi’s scheduled Iran visit on Saturday and Health Minister J P Nadda’s visit to Geneva.

The Centre came to the decision to partially defer the SC order after most of the states agreed in principal to adopt the NEET exam pattern but was of the opinion that it would have been appropriate if it were held from the next academic session. A meeting in this regard was convened by Nadda on Monday last.

During the meet, the states had flagged off various issues, including problems related to language and syllabus for students. They said the students affiliated to state boards will find it tough to appear for the uniform test as early as July.

In India, there are above 30,000 MBBS seats and 9,600 post-graduation seats in private medical colleges, while above 25,000 MBBS seats are in government medical colleges. There are total 422 medical colleges in the country out of which 224 are private.

The top court’s April 28 order had made NEET mandatory for admission to undergraduate medical courses across the country for the academic year 2016-2017. 

The Apex Court order had also implied that all government colleges, deemed universities and private medical colleges would be covered under NEET and those examinations which had already taken place or were slated to be conducted separately stand scrapped.

Major political parties and states had favoured deferring implementation of the Apex Court verdict. Several state governments wanted their exams to be the basis for admission for their 85 per cent quota seats for this year too.