Supreme Court upholds validity of OBC quota in NEET seats

New Delhi: Noting that high scores are not the sole criteria for merit, the Supreme Court on Thursday upheld its January 7 order allowing reservation for Other Backward Classes (OBC) in the NEET undergraduate and postgraduate admissions for 2021-22.

"Merit must be contextualised with respect to social and economic background. Role of reservation cannot be negated in remedying backwardness. Reservation is not at odds with merit but furthers the distributive consequences of social justice," a bench of Justices DY Chandrachud and AS Bopanna said.

The court also pronounced that there will be no stay on the Economically Weaker Sections (EWS) criteria for admission to NEET-PG and the existing criteria (Rs 8 lakh gross annual income cut-off) will apply to the current admission year. "Judicial intervention at this stage would have delayed admissions for this year. Therefore, no stay on reservation criteria for 2021-22 batch. We are still in the midst of a pandemic. Delay in recruitment of doctors would impact pandemic response," the court said. It would not be possible to pass order on merits of the policy without hearing all parties with respect to material relied on for reservation, and identification of "poor and poorest", the bench said.

Citing Article 15(4) and 15(5), which call for substantive equality, the top court said, "Competitive exams don't reflect excellence, capabilities of individuals. They do not reflect the social economic and cultural advantage that accrues to some classes."

The bench also clarified that since reservation and number of seats are not disclosed till after the examination is held, it cannot be said that goalposts of seats have been changed.

The issue of the validity of EWS reservation and eligibility status will be heard by the top court in third week of March. In an interim order issued on January 7, the Supreme Court allowed resumption of medical counselling for NEET-PG admissions for the year 2021-22. It also upheld the validity of 27 per cent OBC and 10 per cent EWS quotas. The order pertained to a petition challenging reservation for OBC and EWS introduced by the central government in the All India Quota (AIQ) seats in state government medical institutions.