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Chandigarh: The Punjab and Haryana high court on Friday directed the Baba Farid University of Health Sciences (BFUHS) and the Punjab government to allow provisional counselling to those students who are bona fide residents of Punjab and who, in terms of conditions of prospectus, owned property more than five years prior to the date of application.

The Punjab government, through a notice dated October 14, held such candidates ineligible on the ground that they had not filled in their option as state of Punjab while filling in NEET form in April 2022.

A division bench comprising Justice Ritu Bahri and Justice Nidhi Gupta has passed these orders while hearing a petition filed by Himanshu Verma and other candidates challenging the notice.

It was argued that the notice amounts to changing the rules of game mid-way, because candidates had no clue at the time of filling the NEET form that they must fill the option of state of eligibility as Punjab. Even in the prospectus issued by Baba Farid University on October 7, there was no such condition that candidates mention the state of Punjab in their NEET form, which had been filled as far back as April 2022.

Counsel for the petitioners, Amar Vivek Aggarwal contended that Punjab acted totally contrary to the spirit of eligibility and merit, by prescribing conditions after the notification of counselling on October 13, that only such candidates will be treated as eligible who had filled in their Punjab state status in the NEET form. In the NEET form, there was no such requirement or mandatory condition that the choice of state be quoted, Aggarwal pointed out.

“By prescribing such a condition, albeit, retrospectively, the State has acted in a totally arbitrary manner and has changed the rules at a much later and advanced stage. The petitioners… met the criteria which was in vogue as per the extant notification dated September 22, 2021, when these candidates filled in NEET form in April 2022,” the counsel had argued.



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