NEET UG 2024: Supreme Court refuses to stay counselling

The Supreme Court on Thursday refused to stay counselling for admissions to medical colleges via the National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test (NEET) undergraduate exam..A Vacation Bench of Justices Vikram Nath and SVN Bhatti refused to stay the counselling, stating that if NEET 2024 is scrapped by the Court, counselling will also automatically go. "No stay on counselling. If examination goes after final hearing, then counselling also goes," the Court said in response to a plea by students who claimed that they lost 45 minutes of the exam at a centre in Meghalaya..The Court was hearing a slew of pleas including a petition filed by National Testing Agency (NTA) to transfer cases pertaining to NEET pending before various High Courts to the Supreme Court.The Court issued notice on the plea and stayed proceedings related to NEET before various High Courts. The matter was then tagged with related pleas and will be heard next on July 8..On June 11, the Supreme Court had ordered the NTA to respond to the plea leveling allegations of NEET UG paper leak. Then too, the top court had said that it will not stop counseling for admissions of students to the medical colleges.Media reports also state that an extraordinarily large number of candidates got a perfect score as per the results published on June 4.The candidates have alleged irregularities in the award of compensatory marks to students for loss of time.Notably, on May 17, a three-judge bench of Chief Justice of India DY Chandrachud, Justice JB Pardiwala and Justice Manoj Misra had declined to stay the publication of the results of the exam.