Madras High Court comes to aid of British citizen in NEET-UG-2026 counselling

MADURAI: The Madurai Bench of the Madras High Court has directed the Medical Counselling Committee (MCC) to reopen the NEET UG-2026 counselling portal for a British citizen with an “Overseas Citizens of India (OCI)” status, who mistakenly selected the “Foreign National (Other than OCI)” category, allowing him to update his credentials.

Observing that the case concerned “the educational prospectus of a bright student”, Justice L Victoria Gowri directed the MCC to unlock the portal and permit the petitioner to upload the relevant documents to claim the OCI category on the website.

The Court further directed the NRI Scrutiny Committee to scrutinise the documents uploaded by the petitioner and, if they were found to be in order, directed the MCC to facilitate the further process forthwith.

Prajit, a British citizen holding a valid OCI card, had appeared for the NEET UG-2026 examination conducted by the National Testing Agency (NTA) and became eligible to participate in the All India UG counselling conducted by the MCC. However, while submitting his online registration for counselling, Prajit inadvertently selected the category “Foreign National (Other than OCI)” instead of “OCI”.

It was only during document verification that the MCC raised a discrepancy, stating that the uploaded document was not valid and that the petitioner ought to have applied under the OCI category.

During the hearing, Prajit's counsel submitted that he immediately attempted to rectify the mistake through the MCC portal; however, the "Remove Discrepancy" page did not provide any option for uploading an OCI document. The mistake was purely accidental, and there was absolutely no intention to suppress any facts or derive any undue advantage, the counsel submitted.

The counsel appearing for the MCC submitted that the Committee does not change any candidate category. As candidates enter details by themself, both at the time of registration for the examination and during registration for counselling conducted by the MCC, the respondents could take positive action to change the candidate’s category only if permitted by the Court, the counsel submitted.

With the above direction, the Court allowed the writ petition with no order as to costs and closed the connected miscellaneous petition.