The Supreme Court upheld 27% reservation for OBC candidates in the All India Quota seats for undergraduate and postgraduate NEET medical and dental admissions. Rejecting the petitioners' merit-versus-reservation framing, the Court held that reservation is not antithetical to merit but furthers distributive justice, and that an examination rank is not a proxy for merit.
A Division Bench of the Chhattisgarh High Court struck down Rule 11(a) and Rule 11(b) of the State's 2025 PG-medical admission rules, which had reserved State-quota postgraduate seats for candidates who obtained their MBBS from a Chhattisgarh medical college. The Court held the institution-based preference to be a de-facto reservation, ultra vires and violative of Article 14. A digest of the facts, the holding, and the Supreme Court line it applied.