Supreme Court: Considering the urgency of the matter relating to admission of students to private medical institutions, a three judge bench of A.R. Dave, Vikramajit Sen and U.U. Lalit, JJ, gave an interim direction under Article 142 of the Constitutionand allowed the petitioners (private medical institutions), whose recognitions were not renewed by Medical Council of India due to some deficiencies, to admit students on the assurance of the removal of defects in the institutions.
S.U.K. Sagar, who represented the petitioners, alleged that the defects in the institutions which were recorded at the time of the last inspection by the representative of the MCI have been duly rectified, and that at present no defect exist which were pointed out in the report.
The Court observed that fresh Compliance Verification/ Inspection cannot be undertaken due to paucity of time as the last date for giving admissions to MBBS Course for the academic year 2014-15 is September 30, 2014. The Court stated that it could not risk medical seats going vacant in the 2014-15 academic years when the country already is in short of physicians. Therefore, the Court directed the petitioners to file an undertaking by President/ Chairman and Secretary of the petitioner’s institutions within 10 days to the effect that there is no defect in the medical college run by them, and that their deposit with the MCI which is around Rs. 10 crore be forfeited by way of penalty if the statement made in the undertaking is found to be incorrect at the time of the next inspection.
The Court further directed that after the filing of the undertaking by the institutions as prescribed, admissions shall be given to the students from the merit list prepared by the States and that they shall be charged fees prescribed by the Government Medical Colleges of their respective States. Hind Charitable Trust Shekhar Hospital Pvt. Ltd. v. Union of India, W.P. (Civil) No. 469 of 2014, decided on September 18, 2014.
