How did you arrive at Rs 8 lakh as annual income limit for EWS: SC asked Centre on NEET-PG admissions

The counselling for admissions after the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test for postgraduate medical courses (NEET-PG) has remained pending ever since the matter got caught in a legal wrangle in the Supreme Court.

A group of petitions challenged in the apex court the July 29 notification of the Medical Counselling Committee (MCC) providing 27 per cent reservation for other backward class (OBCs) and 10 per cent quota for economically weaker sections (EWS) in the NEET-PG (All India Quota).

The matter was last heard on November 25 when the Centre, responding to pointed queries from the Supreme Court, said it would revisit the criterion that limits annual income at Rs 8 lakh to determine EWS for reservation benefits and sought four weeks to complete the exercise.

Hearing the petitions earlier, a bench headed by Justice D Y Chandrachud had asked the Centre to explain what exercise it had undertaken to arrive at Rs 8 lakh as the limit to annual income to identify EWS eligible for reservation in medical seats under the NEET-PG (AIQ).

On October 21, the court said: “You can’t just pull out Rs 8 lakh from anywhere. There must be some data. Sociological, demographic.”

The bench pointed out that Rs 8 lakh was also the limit fixed for the Other Backward Classes (OBCs) quota, and said that people from that community “suffer from social and educational backwardness” but “under the Constitutional scheme, EWS are not socially and educationally backward”.

Therefore, by having a similar scheme for both, “you are making unequals equals”, it said.

The bench said: “We are not entering the area of policy but need the disclosure for adhering to Constitutional principles… These are areas of policy but we will have to interfere”.

The court also pointed out that the explanation included under Articles 15 and 16 in the 103rd Constitutional amendment, by which EWS reservation was introduced, states that the category may be notified by the state from time to time based on family income and other indicators of economic disadvantage.

As such, it would be necessary for the Centre to disclose the nature of the exercise undertaken in accordance with Article 15(2), the bench said.

On October 15, senior advocate Arvind Datar, appearing for the petitioners, pointed out to the court that the dates for the counselling had been fixed. The Centre then assured the court that the counselling would not take place till it decided the pending petitions on the question.

Additional Solicitor General K M Nataraj conveyed this to the bench which responded, “counselling will not start till we decide on the issue. Mr Nataraj, we are taking your word for it.”

On the last date of hearing on November 25, Solicitor General (SG) Tushar Mehta conveyed to the bench that the counselling would continue to remain on hold during these four weeks when the revision exercise would be undertaken.

Datar pointed out that admissions for the current academic year had already been delayed and sought to know if the implementation of the quota could be postponed to the next academic year.

The bench asked the SG if the government would want to consider the option. “What happens is that we are at the end of November. Suppose you complete it by the end of December and then implementation etc and then the terms would begin only sometime in February-March. Two months, the students are losing time. This is something you may want to consider”, said Justice Chandrachud.

The SG responded that the option will be to go with the present criteria for the current year. “Deferring a constitutional amendment should be the last resort”, he submitted.

Taking note, Justice Chandrachud said: “If they have to do it, let them do it in a proper way. We don’t want to push them in a situation where they do something in an improper way- you know, all the problems that we have noticed in our order. Four weeks is not unreasonably long. I am only worried that medical admissions and the medical year are being postponed”.

The Supreme Court has listed the matter for the next hearing on January 6, 2022.