The Madras High Court has directed authorities to allow a physically disabled candidate to take part in the NEET PG 2025–26 counselling based on the rank he secured in the NEET PG 2024 exam. The bench, led by Justice C. Kumarappan, issued this direction to the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, the Medical Counselling Committee, the National Medical Commission, and the Rajiv Gandhi Government General Hospital, thereby ensuring the candidate’s substantive equality and access to medical education.
The candidate, Tarigonda Surya Maheedhar, completed his MBBS in China in 2019 and cleared the Foreign Medical Graduate Examination in 2020. In 2021, he met with an accident that resulted in the amputation of his left arm above the elbow, leading to a one-arm disability. In 2024, he appeared for NEET PG and secured an All India Rank of 50,084. Being a person with a 90% benchmark disability, Maheedhar sought a 5% reservation under the Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act. However, the authorities declared him functionally unfit for postgraduate studies.
Contesting this decision, Maheedhar petitioned, arguing that the authorities failed to adopt a pragmatic approach. He urged that he should be allowed admission to a discipline that he could productively pursue, given his disability, rather than being summarily excluded. The court noted that an interim order directed Maheedhar to undergo reassessment of his functional disability at JIPMER, and the reassessment revealed that he could potentially manage postgraduate programs or diplomas in fields such as psychiatry, radiation oncology, preventive and social medicine, hospital administration, health administration, public health, pharmacology, or biochemistry.
Relying on the Supreme Court judgment in Kabir Paharia v. National Medical Commission, which emphasized substantive equality and the need for reasonable accommodation rather than exclusion of persons with disabilities, the High Court held that denying counselling to Maheedhar would infringe upon his fundamental rights under Articles 14 and 16 of the Constitution. That precedent clarified that if a candidate is wrongfully denied opportunity due to flawed assessment, the candidate should not be required to retake the exam and must be granted admission based on the existing rank.
Given these findings, the High Court directed that Maheedhar be permitted to participate in the NEET PG 2025–26 counselling process for any of the eight identified postgraduate courses for which he is suited, based on his 2024 rank. The court’s directive integrates both the reassessment findings and the principles of equality and reasonable accommodation.
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