Ahead of the Supreme Court hearing in the NEET post-graduate admissions case to be held on January 6, the Centre has filed an affidavit defending its Rs8 lakh annual income cap for Economically Weaker Sections (EWS) reservation.
The apex court is hearing petitions challenging the Centre and Medical Counselling Committee (MCC) July 29 notice providing 10 per cent for the EWS category for NEET admissions. Counselling for NEET postgraduate (PG) and undergraduate (UG) had been stopped by the Centre pending review of the EWS criteria income cap policy forced by the court.
The Central Government said in the affidavit filed before the Supreme Court that it has decided to stick to the existing criteria of Rs8 lakh annual income limit for determination of EWS with respect to the ongoing admissions to the NEET postgraduate courses. The Government informed that an expert committee constituted by the Government to reassess the criteria suggested that the existing criteria may be continued for ongoing admissions while the revised criteria suggested by the committee may be adopted from the next admission cycle.
Changing the EWS criteria midway will lead to complications, opined the Committee. The Committee recommended the introduction of revised EWS criteria from the next academic year. “The Central government has decided to accept the recommendations of the Committee including the recommendation of applying the new criteria prospectively,” said the affidavit of Central Government.
The three-member committee headed by former Revenue Secretary AB Pandey was constituted by the Centre after the Supreme Court had expressed serious reservations about whether any study was conducted at all before fixing the 8 lakh limit for determining EWS.
The current gross annual family income limit for EWS of 8 lakh or less may be retained. In other words, only those families whose annual income is up to 8 lakh would be eligible to get the benefit of an EWS reservation. The definition of ‘family’ and income would remain the same as those in the OM dated January 17, 2019. EWS may, however, exclude, irrespective of income, a person whose family has 5 acres of agricultural land and above.
However, it concluded that making the above changes during the ongoing admission process may result in inevitable delay and avoidable complications.”When the existing system is ongoing since 2019, no serious prejudice would be caused if it continues for this year as well. Changing the criteria midway is also bound to result in a spate of litigations in various courts across the country by the people/persons whose eligibility would change suddenly,” the committee’s report said.