New Delhi, April 13 The Delhi High Court has directed the Centre to submit a comprehensive response to a petition seeking the filling of empty seats reserved in medical colleges for people with "benchmark disabilities".
The plea requests admission of candidates with disabilities (PWD) who do not meet the eligibility threshold.
A bench, headed by Chief Justice Satish Chandra Sharma, acknowledged the significance of the petition, and gave the Centre six weeks to present its stance on the matter.
The matter would be heard next on July 17.
In February, the High Court had asked the Centre to take a policy decision on filling up vacant seats, reserved for PWD, in medical colleges by taking in candidates who have lesser degree of disability than the prescribed benchmark.
It had also asked the Centre to respond, within three weeks, to a petition filed by an MBBS aspirant, who suffered from a locomotor disability and sought admission in a medical college against an unfilled seat reserved for persons with disabilities.
The MBBS aspirant had appeared in the National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test (NEET) 2022 for undergraduate admission to medical colleges and scored 96.06 percentile and attained the 42nd Rank under the Unreserved Persons with Disabilities (UR-PWD) Category.
However, she was found to be short of the 40 per cent threshold prescribed as benchmark under Section 2(r) of the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (RPwD) Act, 2016, for availing the PwD seat.
The petitioner, whom the AIIMS medical board only considered the deformity in her middle, ring fingers and metacarpals and left out the index finger and disability to be 30 per cent, urged that she be allocated one of the vacant seats under the PwD category in the ongoing NEET-UG 2022 cycle.
During the hearing on Thursday, the bench, which also included Justice Subramonium Prasad, was informed that the Central government had rejected the petitioner's representation.
In response, the court ordered a comprehensive and detailed reply from the Union of India within six weeks.
T. Singhdev, representing the National Medical Commission (NMC), stated that seats reserved for PWD candidates are open to all individuals with benchmark disabilities. If any of these seats remain unfilled, they are offered to other deserving candidates and not wasted.
"The seats reserved for a particular category under the PwD category for example SC (PwD)/ST (PwD)/OBC (PwD)/UR (PwD), are offered for counselling in the first 3 rounds of counselling after which the said seats, if remaining vacant are converted to the parent category for example SC/ST/OBC/UR, so that the same can be offered to a larger pool of candidates so as to ensure that the seats are filled. The aforesaid process is entirely based on merit in the respective categories," the reply filed by NMC stated.
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