A plea has been moved in Delhi High Court seeking direction to quash Section 14 of the impugned National Commission for Indian System of Medicine (NCISM) Act, 2020 that mandated a common NEET for taking admission in all the disciplines of medical education like MBBS, BDS, BAMS, BSMS, BUMS and BHMS.

The bench of Justice DN Patel and Justice Jyoti Singh on January 10 issued notice to Union of India Ministry of Ayurveda, Yoga and Naturopathy, Unani, Siddha and Homoeopathy (AYUSH), National Commission for Indian System of Medicine, National Commission for Homoeopathy, National Testing Agency and others and tagged the matter with other similar pending matters.

The Court listed the matter for March 30, 2022, for further hearing the matter. The Petition stated that even if a common NEET is conducted, the scores of the candidates who wish to pursue AYUSH Courses may be compared separately from that of the candidates who wish to pursue their career in modern medicine. In other words, separate percentiles may be calculated for the students who opt to take admissions in AYUSH Courses, while deciding the All-India Rank of an individual and preparing the common merit list.

The petition have been moved by six students who appeared in NEET are intending to pursue AYUSH Courses in Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh stated that, despite of petitioners being qualified students for pursuing AYUSH Courses, the Petitioners may end up without getting admissions in colleges because of the common NEET examination for all the medical courses.

The plea also mentioned that in the definition of medicine under the Act, from which NEET has been created that the medicine means Modern Scientific medicine which is quite different from Indian Medicine, and Medical Institution which grants degrees, diplomas or licences in Modern Scientific medicine will be construed as Medical Institution to which NEET can be applicable.

Advocate Animesh Kumar appeared for petitioners submitted that by notifying a common NEET examination for MBBS/BDS as well as AYUSH courses, the respondents have completely overlooked the pivotal fact that both these courses operate in different fields and there are fundamental differences between the framework of both the courses.