Nagpur: Supreme Court has rejected a plea for scrapping upper age limit for candidates appearing in National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test of 2018 conducted for conducted for undergraduate medical and dental courses.
On Friday the court refused to intervene in a batch of petitions seeking to quash a notification fixing the age limit of 30 years for candidates belonging to the reserved category appearing in the NEET Entrance Test of 2018.
A group of 10 students from different states, all above the age of 25, challenged the CBSE’s decision, saying the entrance exams for other medical colleges, such as the All India Institute of Medical Sciences or the Jawaharlal Institute of Postgraduate Medical Education and Research did not have an age limit.
The petition said that in almost all developed countries such as USA, Canada, UK and most of European Union, Australia etc. there is no upper-age limit for studying medicine course if the student is otherwise competent to undertake medicine courses. Therefore, there is no rationale behind the decision as to why a candidate above the age of 25 years is not competent to take medicine courses in India.
The students claimed that the apex court had recently stayed the Bar Council of India regulations prescribing for maximum age-limit for taking admission to law courses to 20 years (for integrated course) and 30 years (for 3 year course) on the ground that there was no rationality behind fixing the age limit.
Adv Amit Kumar, who appeared for the students, contended that the decision was illegal and arbitrary and pleaded the court to stay the decision to pave the way for the petitioner to take the entrance examination. A bench of Justices S A Bobde and L Nageswara Rao, rejected the plea and refused to take decsion on the petition.
