Chennai: In a landmark decision, the Madras High Court has granted interim relief to a postgraduate medical aspirant with 90% locomotor disability, allowing him to provisionally register and participate in the NEET-PG 2024 counselling process.
Case Background
The petitioner, a qualified MBBS graduate from China, had cleared the Foreign Medical Graduates Examination (FMGE) in 2020 and was subsequently registered with the Andhra Pradesh Medical Council. However, a tragic accident in 2021 resulted in the loss of one arm, leading to a 90% disability assessment by the Rajiv Gandhi Government General Hospital (RGGGH), Chennai.
Despite securing a 76.87 percentile in NEET-PG 2024 with a rank of 50,064, the candidate was declared ineligible for medical courses by the RGGGH Disability Assessment Board based on the Postgraduate Medical Education Regulations, 2023 (PGMER 2023).
Court’s Consideration & Ruling
The HC referred to:
📌 The Supreme Court’s decision in Omkar Ramchandra Gond v. Union of India, which mandates that Disability Assessment Boards must explicitly state whether a disability would hinder the pursuit of a medical course.
📌 A previous Madras HC order (Feb 2025) allowing a similar candidate to be reassessed at JIPMER, Puducherry.
Considering these precedents, Justice N Mala directed the Medical Counselling Committee (MCC) to allow the petitioner to provisionally register for NEET-PG 2024 counselling, pending further reassessment.
Key Directives from HC Order
✔ Reassessment at JIPMER: The court instructed JIPMER, Puducherry to constitute a special Disability Assessment Board, including a PwD-category medical expert.
✔ Functionality over Benchmarking: The board must assess whether the candidate’s disability affects functional competency instead of solely relying on a benchmark disability percentage.
✔ Clear Justification if Ineligible: If deemed ineligible, the board must provide specific reasons.
This ruling sets a significant precedent for aspiring doctors with disabilities, reinforcing the need for individualized functional assessments over rigid disability thresholds.