The Supreme Court has exposed and condemned the malpractice of seat blocking in NEET-PG. It issued 10 major reforms to ensure transparency, merit-based selection, and strict accountability.
In an important decision to stop wrong practices in postgraduate medical admissions, the Supreme Court of India has issued a strong set of rules to improve the NEET-PG counselling process.
This ruling was given by a bench of Justice JB Pardiwala and Justice R Mahadevan.
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The main issue they targeted is the unfair practice of “seat-blocking,” which has damaged the fairness and trust in NEET-PG admissions for many years.
This judgment was passed in response to a petition filed by the State of Uttar Pradesh and the Director General of Medical Education & Training.
The petition challenged a 2018 decision by the Allahabad High Court that had earlier punished the authorities for mistakes and irregularities in that year’s NEET-PG counselling.
Seat-blocking means that candidates accept seats in early counselling rounds but later give them up after getting better seats in later rounds.
This act creates fake scarcity, misguides other students, and goes against the rule of merit-based selection.
The Supreme Court took this issue seriously and said that seat-blocking is not just a simple mistake but a part of much bigger problems in the system.
“Seat blocking is not merely an isolated wrongdoing it reflects deeper systemic flaws. Achieving a truly fair and efficient system will require more than policy tweaks,” said Justice Pardiwala in the judgment.
To completely solve this problem, the Court has given ten important guidelines that must be followed by all authorities and institutions across the country:
- A National Counselling Calendar will now be introduced to make sure that All India Quota (AIQ) and State quota rounds happen at the same time in a properly coordinated manner.
- All private and deemed universities will now have to clearly show their tuition fees, hostel charges, and any other costs before counselling starts. This will help students make informed choices and avoid confusion.
- The Court ordered the formation of a Centralized Fee Regulation system. This means a standard fee structure will be applied and controlled by the National Medical Commission (NMC), so that no institute can charge unfairly.
- An Upgrade Window will be allowed after Round 2 of counselling. This means students who already have a seat can move to a better one if available, without reopening the whole process for fresh candidates.
- To make exams more honest and clear, authorities must publish raw scores, answer keys, and explain how scores were normalized, especially since exams happen in multiple shifts. This will help everyone understand how marks were given.
- Strict punishments will be given for those who try seat-blocking again. These include losing their security deposit, being disqualified from future NEET-PG attempts, and blacklisting of involved colleges.
- Real-time Aadhaar-Based Seat Tracking will now be used to stop duplicate or false seat holdings and ensure every seat is properly tracked.
- If state officials or heads of institutions break these rules, they can now face contempt of court or disciplinary action, holding them accountable.
- There will now be a Uniform Counselling Code that sets the same rules for all states. This includes eligibility rules, how students can withdraw, mop-up rounds, and how complaints are handled.
- An independent third-party body will be formed under the National Medical Commission (NMC) to audit and monitor the counselling process every year to ensure all the new rules are followed.
The background of this case goes back to complaints raised by students who appeared for NEET-PG in the 2017–2018 academic year.
The Allahabad High Court had found that some students with lower ranks got to attend mop-up rounds even after they were already given seats. This unfairly affected students with higher ranks and better merit.
The High Court had ordered ₹10 lakh as compensation for each student who was wronged and asked for big changes in the system.
But the Supreme Court paused this order in 2018 and has now decided to reduce the compensation to ₹1 lakh per petitioner, stating that there have been some improvements in the rules since then.
The Court also accepted that many positive steps were taken after 2021 in the case of Nihila PP v. Medical Counselling Committee, where a new four-round counselling system was started for AIQ seats. But the judges said that just creating these systems is not enough.
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They stressed the importance of making sure these changes are really followed and said it should happen with the help of proper regulation and full transparency in how the system is run.
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