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Petition in SC for removing the age bar on NEET
On Monday, the Supreme Court has dismissed a petition praying for age relaxation in appearing for National Eligibility and Entrance Test 2018 examination while challenging a notification introducing the upper age limit 25 years for unreserved candidates and 30 years for reserved category candidates.
The bench comprising of Justice SA Bobde and Justice L Nageswara allowed the petitioners to withdraw their respective petitions with liberty to move to the high court. The petition has been moved by Bhaskar Nandi, Jashna Shayla K separately.
The reason behind Jashna to file the petition was that she was denied the opportunity to appear in NEET 2018 conducted by Central Board of Secondary Education as the latter has “arbitrarily and unreasonably imposed age limit of 30 years for candidates belonging to reserved category aspiring to appear for the said examination”.
She has submitted to the court that CBSE has imposed the said age limit in the garb of a notification. The issuance of the said notification was done by Medical council Of India on January 28, 2018, seeking amendment in Regulations on Graduate Medical Education, 1997 thereby imposing the said age limit.
She has even contended that she was born in April, 1988 and falls under the reserved category and that she would turn 30 years of age just before the examination.
Since the MCI has failed to give any reasons whatsoever for imposing restriction on the age of candidates aspiring for NEET, the petitioner referred to the prospectus issued by the Office of the Controller of Entrance Examinations, Government of Kerala, on January 30 for admission to Professional Degree Courses, 2018.
The said prospectus as issued and submitted provides for reservation of a seat under the quota for “Nurses-Allopathy” to MBBS courses for nurses in regular services under Government of Kerela for which she would have been eligible. But she couldn’t because of the age limit imposed by the CBSE in NEET.
The petitioner while submitting the petition also contended that for a nurse it takes minimum 3 to 4 years to get into regular service after completing graduation. She said that for getting into regular services she had to go through a lot hurdles. As such it can be stated that the essential time of the petitioner was wasted by the governmental apathy and procedural delay for which the petitioner is paying the penalty by not being able to apply for NEET.
