SC Lowers NEET Cut-off by 10 Percentile for BDS Programme 2020-21

Supreme Court has directed the Centre that the vacant seats in the first year BDS for the 2020-21 academic year be filled from the candidates who appeared in NEET UG for the current year after lowering the minimum marks by 10 percentile. According to the reports, there are about 7,000 seats available for admission to the first year BDS course.

A bench of Justices L N Rao and Krishna Murari informed that the general category candidates who have secured the 40 percentile will be eligible for admission to the first year BDS course for 2020-21.SC/ST/ OBC candidates who have qualified for the NEET 2020 exam and have secured 30 percentile will be eligible too. The bench further informed that the admissions will be done strictly in accordance with merit and the admission process will be completed by 18th February 2021.

Any other candidate who has qualified for the NEET 2020 examination even without lowering the minimum marks and is willing to participate in the admission will be considered for admission to the BDS course.

Meanwhile, the bench rejected the submission of the Centre stating that there are sufficient Dentists in the country. However, according to the government, the reason behind the vacant seats is the high fees charged by the private dental colleges in the country. Only 265 out of 7,000 seats are vacant in government dental colleges. Whereas the number of vacant seats is exceptionally high in private colleges.

The bench noted that the total number of seats available for the academic year 2020-2021 for MBBS are 91,367, BDS is 26,949 and AYUSH is 52,720 making it a total of 1,71,036 seats. Whereas, the NEET qualified candidates are 7,71,500.