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A Supreme Court bench of Justices Ravikumar and Sudhanshu Dhulia today dismissed a plea seeking declaration of 92 in-service quota seats in NEET super speciality surrendered by Tamil Nadu as newly added seats.

The plea also sought for these seats to be made available to all candidates even if they had taken admission in the previous rounds.

The bench relied on its order from May 2022, wherein the court had allowed mop-up round for all the unfilled, stray, vacant super-speciality seats and had further barred any doctor who had joined seats earlier from participating in the mop-up round.

When the matter came up for hearing today, the vacation bench expressed that it was not inclined to pass a judgment that would amount to modifying the previous order of the court. The counsel for the petitioner however argued that since there were time constraints, the petitioners in the case took up the seats that were allotted to them in the first and second round of counselling.  The court however declined granting relief.

On May 9, 2022, the Supreme Court held that the mop-up round “shall be held for all the unfilled/stray/vacant super specialty seats subject to the condition that any doctor who has joined a seat in the earlier round shall not be eligible for participating in the mop up round. Since the mop round is being held, a suitable extension of time may be granted for completing the admissions.”

Vacation Bench today in light of the above observations, concluded that it has no hesitation to hold that petition cannot succeed. The court further held that the petitioners were not entitled to seek such a prayer.

Case Title: Kaviyarasan vs. Union of India