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A 19 year old student of Uttar Pradesh in an unprecedented instance of his courage, will and legal brilliance, managed to win over his MBBS seat as he pleaded his case before the Supreme Court of India, representing himself, and in the process won his case in about 10 minutes before the Supreme Court. The outstanding hearing was held on February 13, 2026, and its result was that the court ordered the authorities to offer him admission.

The aged student, who was named as Aryan Sharma (confidentiality laws were observed) with a NEET-UG 2025 score of 685 was not offered an admission during the mop-up round because of the technical mismatch with his category certificate. Nevertheless, the counselling authority and the medical college declined to hear his case once again which left him seatless despite his rank being way below the cutoff point of the state quota.

Having no other choice and failing to hire senior counsel last minute, Aryan was forced to appear in front of the Supreme Court. The young aspirant appeared before the bench when his writ petition came up, and requested of the bench to allow him to present his own case on February 13, when the writ petition was brought before the bench that consisted of Justice Sudhanshu Dhulia and Justice Ahsanuddin Amanullah.

This was succeeded by a rare and inspirational courtroom scene. Aryan presented his arguments calmly taking around 10 minutes, referring to the appropriate clauses of the NEET counselling guidelines, the decisions of the Supreme Court with respect to similar certificate cases and the principle of substantial compliance. He alleged the clerical mistake in his certificate, made a supporting paper trail and also humbly indicated that refusal to grant admission on technical account would lead to an irreparable decrease in his career.

The bench was respectively listening. Following his requests, the Additional Solicitor General on behalf of the Union Government and an attorney representing the state authorities did not vehemently resist the plea. The court subsequently made the order to request the respective medical college and counselling authority to give Aryan admission in the MBBS course at once subject to him satisfying other formalities.

The incident was referred to as an exceptional and inspiring one by the legal experts and senior advocates who are in the court. One of the senior lawyers said: It is extremely infrequent that a litigant-in-person under 19 years of age can argue so lucidly and convincingly before the supreme court.

Out of the court, Aryan later informed the reporters: I simply wanted a just opportunity. I was studying day and night NEET. I did not even imagine that I would be forced to fight in the Supreme Court; however, I am happy that I did.

The case has once again in the NEET counselling process outlined issues in terms of the need to give the students a fair chance in instances whereby genuine mistakes may have been made.