Supreme Court extends deadline for Medical Courses admissions

The Supreme Court has allowed to extend the deadline for admission to Medical/ Dental courses and post-graduate courses in all medical colleges across the country till July 31.

A bench of Justices B S Chauhan and Dipak Misra passed the order by allowing a bunch of interlocutory applications, including the one filed by Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra and the Medical Council of India (MCI) for the purpose.

Earlier, the admission had to be complete by May 31, but it became impossible in view of challenges made by some of the private medical colleges to the National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test (NEET).

"This extension of time is applicable to the MBBS, and their post-graduation courses restrictively for the academic year 2013- 14 only," the bench said.

Thousands of students were left in the lurch after the dispute reached the apex court, which first allowed the colleges to conduct their own tests but restrained them from publishing the results.

It was only on May 13 when the court lifted its prohibition against their admission in undergraduate and post-graduate courses and allowed the result to be declared.

A three-judge bench presided over by Chief Justice Altamas Kabir modified its December 13 order, paving the way for the announcement of results of the NEET introduced by the Medical Council of India for admission to post-graduate and under-graduate courses.

The court, however, had said its judgment on the validity of the NEET would be passed in July.

Meanwhile, the students mainly demanded preference during admission based on scores obtained by them in the National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test (NEET) examination conducted by the Medical Council of India (MCI).

As many as 99 medical students filed a petition in the Gujarat high court on Wednesday regarding the pattern of admission in the postgraduate course to medical colleges affiliated to various universities in the state. This comes close on the heels of the petition filed by the students of MS and Bhavnagar universities.

The Gujarat University and the state government have decided to give admission to the students on NEET score from the 2013-14 academic year.

The MCI has decided to conduct uniform NEET examination for admission to both graduation and PG courses.

Now, some students want to continue the old process of admission while others demanded preference over students of other universities in postgraduation.