Supreme Court: Showing concern over the fate of the student who has been deprived of admission to the MBBS course, despite he or she being meritorious, vigilant and diligent and thereby abandoning the path of recalcitrance and eventually being found flawless, is forced to suffer non-admission to the course for which he had aspired for and found suitable because of lapses committed either by the counselling authority or the administrating authority intrinsically connected with the process of admission; the bench of Dipak Misra and R.F. Nariman, JJ said that when the courts have gone to the extent of saying that for the fault of the court, the litigant should not suffer, it is unimaginable that for the fault of the administrators or the counselling body or for some kind of evil designer, grant of compensation should be regarded as the lone remedy.
Relying upon the 2-judge bench decision in Chandigarh Administration v. Jasmine Kaur, (2014) 10 SCC 521, the Medical Council of India contended that grant of compensation is the only possible remedy. The Court hence said that the aforementioned decision requires re-consideration by a larger bench as the redressal of a fundamental right, if one deserves to have, cannot be weighed in terms of grant of compensation only. Grant of compensation may be an additional relief. Confining it to grant of compensation as the only measure would defeat the basic purpose of the fundamental rights which the Constitution has conferred so that the said rights are sustained. It would be inapposite to recognize the right, record a finding that there is a violation of the right and deny the requisite relief. A young student should not feel that his entire industry to get himself qualified in the examination becomes meaningless because of some fault or dramatic design of certain authorities and they can get away by giving some amount as compensation. It may not only be agonizing but may amount to grant of premium either to laxity or evil design or incurable greed of the authorities. [S. Krishna Sradha v. State of Andhra Pradesh, 2017 SCC OnLine SC 66, decided on 19.01.2017]
