The court upheld that the determination of cut-off dates for examinations is a policy matter and should not be interfered with unless found arbitrary or unreasonable.

1 The Miscellaneous Application has been filed before this Court following the order dated 21 February 2024.

2 The petitioners are students who have completed the academic segment of the BDS Course and are pursuing their internship. The NEET-MDS 2024 was notified on 20 January 2024 and is to take place on 18 March 2024.

3 During the course of the hearing, the Court was apprised of the fact that 29,128 students have registered for the NEET-MDS which is being conducted on the Digitally signed by Sanjay Kumar Date: 2024.03.16 10:51:00 IST Reason:

Signature Not Verified ensuing Monday.

In the petition which was filed before this Court under Article 32 of the Constitution, the petitioners sought an extension of the cut-off date of eligibility with reference to the completion of the internship so as to enable the petitioners to appear for the ensuing NEET-MDS 2024. The cut-off date for completion of internship was originally fixed at 31 March 2024.

5 The grievance of the petitioners was that, as regards the NEET-PG 2024, the internship cut-off date has been extended from 31 March 2024 to 15 August 2024 and, as a consequence, the examination has been pushed back from 15 March 2024 to 7 July 2024. The petitioners seek a parity of treatment for students who seek to appear for the NEET-MDS 2024 by an extension of the cut- off date for the completion of internship from 31 March 2024 to 15 August 2024.

6 When the petition came up before this Court on 21 February 2024, counsel for the National Dental Commission apprised the Court that the Union of India was seized of the issue. Mr Gaurav Sharma submitted, that the cut-off date for the MDS was fixed so as to bring the examination process and academic schedule back on rails after the disruption which was caused due to the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic.

7 Bearing in mind the nature of the grievance, this Court, in its order dated 21 February 2024, observed that the “issue of fixing cut-off dates pertains to the policy domain”. Hence, the Court permitted the petitioners to submit a representation to the Union of India, which was directed to be disposed of expeditiously and preferably within a period of a week from the date of the order. At the same time, the Court clarified that it did not express any opinion on the merits of the claim and would leave it open to the Union Government to take an appropriate view having regard to all the facts and circumstances of the case.

The Miscellaneous Application has been filed in order to seek a direction for rescheduling the NEET-MDS 2024 Examination. The petitioners seek an extension of the cut-off for eligibility (i) after ascertaining the internship completion data from Universities offering MDS courses across India; and (ii) so as to bring about parity between the eligibility cut-off for NEET-PG and NEET-MDS

2024. 9 We have heard Mr Colin Gonsalves, senior counsel appearing in support of the Miscellaneous Application and Mr Gaurav Sharma, counsel appearing on behalf of the National Dental Commission.

10 In support of the application, Mr Gonsalves submitted thus:

(i) When an earlier order was passed by this Court on 8 February 2022 requiring the authorities to consider the representations of students in a similar situation, the date originally fixed for the examination (6 March

2022) and eligibility for completion of internship (31 March 2022) was pushed back by the authorities to 2 May 2022 for the completion of the examination and 31 July 2022 for the completion of internship. The authorities stated that this was in order to bring parity between the NEET- MDS 2022 and NEET-PG 2022;

(ii) For 2024, the National Medical Commission conducted a nationwide online survey in December 2023, after which the date for NEET-PG 2024, was pushed back from 3 March 2024 to 7 July 2024 and the eligibility date was refixed from 31 March 2024 to 15 August 2024;

(iii) If the Dental Council of India had similarly carried out an online survey, it would have ob