New Delhi:
In a big relief to aspiring medical students, the Supreme Court
Monday paved the way for government and private medical colleges
to admit students to under-graduate and post-graduate medical and
dental courses for the 2013 session.
The court lifted curbs on the declaration of entrance tests'
results for the courses and said: "...the students, who aspire to
gain entry into the medical colleges at the MBBS and BDS and the
post-graduate levels, have been caught in the legal tangle for no
fault of theirs and are the victims of policy decisions".
The apex court bench of Chief Justice Altamas Kabir, Justice Anil
R. Dave and Justice Vikramajit Sen modified its Dec 13, 2012 order
by which it had permitted various institutions and medical bodies
to conduct the entrance examination for the courses but restrained
them from declaring the results.
"In order to safeguard their (students) interests, as also the
interest of the hospitals, we consider it just and equitable to
lift the bar imposed by us on Dec 13, 2012, for this year's
entrance examinations and, to that extent, we modify our order,"
the court said, in an interim order.
"Without fresh entrants into the post-graduate courses, even for a
year, the hospitals are likely to be adversely affected on account
of lack of doctors to directly take care of the patients," the
court said.
"...we feel that students hoping to gain admission in the MBBS as
well as post-graduate courses on the strength of the results of
the examinations, which have already been held and for which they
had appeared, should not be denied such opportunity, at least for
this year," the court said.
"We had been informed by the learned senior counsel appearing for
the Christian Medical College, Vellore, and the Karnataka Pvt.
Medical & Dental College, that a large number of students would be
adversely affected and would stand to lose a year, if the bar on
the declaration of their results was not lifted," the court said.
The court's order came on a batch of petitions challenging the Dec
21, 2010 decision of regulator Medical Council of India (MCI)
notifying a National Eligibility Entrance Test (NEET) for
admission to post-graduate medical courses.
The petitioner colleges challenged the competence of the MCI to
introduce a test which prevented them from having any control on
admissions.
The court would pronounce its verdict on the validity of the Dec
21, 2010 notification of the MCI July 4.
|