Give admissions on NEET rankings: High Court

The Hyderabad High Court on Thursday declared that the NTR Health University and Kaloji Narayana Rao Health University must make admissions in their affiliated medical colleges in AP and Telangana based on the Neet ranking.

While vacating the stay granted on August 17 on the counselling process, the bench directed the Neet Convener and other authorities to withdraw the orders passed on August 18, cancelling the allotment of seats granted to some of the petitioners in the batch in the national pool, and allow the students to join the courses for which they were granted admission.

On August 17, the bench had stayed the counselling while dealing with a petition by Dr B. Satish Kumar and 12 others, challenging a memo issued by the Director General of Health Services, asking the universities to fill 15 per cent of open category seats by conducting national-level counselling.Soon after the interim stay, the Medical Counselling Committee of the Centre issued an order directing colleges across the country not to allow students from AP and TS to join



their colleges though they were allotted seats through Neet- 2017 counselling.

Aggrieved by the orders, the students of AP and TS moved the High Court. Article 371-D and the consequential Presidential Order mandates that 85 per cent of seats in a region (Telangana, Coastal Andhra and Rayalaseema) will be reserved for local candidates and 15 per cent will be open seats for all students from the three regions. Thus all the seats were filled by students from undivided state of AP only.

The bench pointed out, “Though the interim stay is beneficial to a few individuals it has caused immense hardship to scores of candidates who have secured admission to super-specialty courses in various institutions throughout the country. These candidates are also the children of the states of Telangana and AP and hence applying the rule of balance of convenience and irreparable hardship, the interim order passed on August 17 is liable to be vacated.” The bench posted the case for final hearing to September 11.