Delhi HC dismisses student's plea seeking extension of application date for NEET-2020

The Delhi High Court on Tuesday dismissed a student's plea, who could not fill her National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test (NEET-2020) form due to ill health of her father, seeking opportunity to fill the form and to appear in the examination. Justice Sanjeev Sachdeva said that NEET (UG) - 2020 is now scheduled to be held on July 26 and any change in the schedule is likely to disrupt the entire examination schedule, the date for filling up of the medical seats and commencement of the course.

The bench was hearing a petition filed by the student, Bhavya Arora, through Advocate Rakesh Malhotra seeking early hearing on the petition as there is a possibility of an opportunity to file online applications for the NEET exam, now scheduled to be held at the end of July 2020. "No valid ground has been furnished by the petitioner as to how the petitioner was prevented from submitting the online application and why an exception should be made in the case of the petitioner for extension of date. Admittedly, the petitioner was not prevented from submitting the online application because of any action on the part of the respondents," the court said.

The court said that the petitioner had admittedly not submitted the online application form before the cut off date of January 6 when there was no hardship faced on account of the COVID-19 pandemic. Even otherwise, the petitioner was not required to submit a physical application form and had to make an online application that could have been done from any location. "I find no merit in the petition and no ground for granting any relief to the petitioner. The petition is accordingly dismissed," the court said.

Counsel Malhotra submitted that the National Testing Agency (NTA) has also by a public notice dated May 19 extended the last date for submission of online application for JEE (Main), 2020. He prayed that similar fresh opportunity should be granted to all students who had not submitted their online application for NEET (UG)-2020 on parity with the extension of time for submission of online application for JEE (Main), 2020. Counsel appearing for NTA submitted that public notice had very categorically fixed the last date as December 31, 2019, which was subsequently extended to January 6 and since the petitioner did not submit the online application form, no extension could be granted to the petitioner to submit the online application after the expiry of the stipulated date. She further submitted that even otherwise the medical record filed along with the petition does not justify the non-submission of the online application within time by the petitioner. (ANI)

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