NEET PG 2021: Plea filed in SC seeking to conduct special stray round

On Monday, a petition was filed in the Supreme Court, asking the court to order the Respondent Medical Counselling Committee (MCC) to conduct a Special Stray Round of counselling to allow candidates to compete for empty seats left after the All India Quota stray vacancy round (AIQ).

The petition was set for further hearing on June 8 by the vacation bench comprising Justices MR Shah and Aniruddha Bose. Respondent counsel has also been directed to receive instruction on the petition by the Court. Advocate Milind Kumar Advocate represented the petitioners.

The petitioners claimed that they are aggrieved by the counselling process which was conducted by MCC in a manner that all the vacant seats were not a part of the Stray vacancy round of the counselling.

They said that the cause of action for filing the present Writ Petition arose on May 11 2022 when the Petitioner’s received a reply to the RTI they had filed wherein it was stated that “at the time of online allotment process all medical/ dental post graduate seats were exhausted but due to non-joining, resignation, and non-reported some seats remained vacant”. However, official data has not been provided, the petitioners said.

Hence, the petitioner has sought to direct Respondent MCC to provide the exact number of vacant seats after the conduct of stray vacancy round of AIQ and to conduct a Special Stray Round of counselling to allow the candidates to participate for the vacant seats which are available after the conduct of stray vacancy round of AIQ.