NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court has dismissed a request to cancel and redo round 3 of the all-India quota (AQI counselling for NEET-PG 2024.

On Friday, February 7, 2025, a bench of Justices B. R Gavai and K. Vinod Chandran rejected the plea, as the National Medical Commission (NMC) argued that changing the counselling process now would affect students across all states. The Apex court agreed, saying that allowing this petition could lead to many more similar requests.

The petitioners, eligible candidates for NEET-PG 2024 counselling, said that All-India Quota round-3 started before some states had finished round 2 of their state quota counselling. This overlap, they argued, allowed some candidates who should not have been eligible for All-India Quota round 3 to block seats unfairly. When these candidates later got better options in state counselling, they gave up their All-India Quota seats, which then became unavailable for others.

The plea specifically said that this issue was leading in Madhya Pradesh, where round 2 state counselling had not finished before the quota round-3 started. With this, many deserving students lost seats.

The petitioners emphasized AIQ round 3 to be cancelled and re-done. Alternatively, they suggested holding a fourth round of counselling to re-allocate seats left vacant on account of the previous scheduling issues.

However, the Supreme Court refused to interfere, saying it would cause widespread disruptions to the admission process.

The plea requests a fourth round of counseling for leftover seats that were blocked by candidates from states where the second round of state counseling was not completed. Additionally, it is asking for an option for candidates eligible for AIQ round 3 to register for the stray round of NEET-PG 2024 counseling.

This stray round is part of the four rounds of AIQ counseling conducted by the Medical Counselling Committee (MCC). The MCC has already conducted three rounds of counseling, with the third round's reporting extended till February 4, 2025. The stray vacancy round is scheduled to start with seat matrix verification on February 6, 2025, and fresh registrations from February 7 to 11, 2025.