Read Time: 04 minutes

The Supreme Court today refused to entertain a plea filed by 17 resident Postgraduate Doctors seeking an alternative mode of assessment in view of their engagement in Covid 19 duties.
 
The Division Bench of Justices Indira Banerjee and V Ramasubramanian allowed the petitioners to withdraw their plea.

Senior Advocate Salman Khurshid appearing for the petitioners submitted "There was a clear indication that atleast 4 months would be granted after Covid duty was over. Today I stand working for Covid. For me to go to covid duty and come back and then go for exam is the difficulty. In light of the Prime Ministerial decision atleast 4 weeks time must be given."

The bench however said that the prayer was for an alternative mode of assessment which was not for the Court to decide. Moreover the National Medical Commission was not the authority to fix exams rather individual authorities fixed such dates.

Justice Ramasubramanian further said "There may be students in different parts of the country who would want to go abroad and if we postpone then they will come to us that they want the exams. What will we tell them."

In the light of the above observations, the bench dismissed the petition as withdrawn.

The petitioners had submitted  that since their duties were being utilized until fresh batch of postgraduate students join as per the notice of the National Medical Commission and the postponement of NEET-PG until August 31, 2021, they did not have enough time to prepare for the exams.

The petitioners have further submitted that the abrupt announcement of the examination schedule is “unreasonable, arbitrary and a mindless exercise” as it fails to take into consideration the hardship which will be caused to thousands of resident doctors.

The "This will not only be a life threat to the patient which the doctor is attending but at the same time will also expose them to the deadly virus. It is more dangerous because they will have to come back from the examination and attend to the Covid patients, who are most vulnerable to any kind of exposure”.

Case Title: Sujit Kumar Shukla vs National Medical Commission WP(C) 674/2021