Private medical colleges challenge Centre's Decision on increasing PG medical seats in GMCs alone, SC junks plea

New Delhi: Expressing its happiness over the preference of the Government for Government Medical Colleges (GMCs), the Supreme Court recently on Tuesday dismissed a plea that challenged the decision of the Centre granting one-time increase in Postgraduate medical seats in GMCs alone.

For the academic year 2018-2019, the Union Government had given its permission for increasing PG medical seats in clinical courses (Broad Speciality) under the revised teacher's ratio in GMCs only. At that time, the same preference was not given to private medical colleges.

While considering the matter, the top court bench of Justices BR Gavai and Vikram Nath observed, "Such a thing [Centre's decision] is coming up for the first time! Whenever matters were listed before me (in High Court), they were partial to Private medical colleges. And by judicial orders we had to increase the seats in private colleges....Fortunately those were upheld by the Supreme Court."

Filing the plea before the top court bench, a private medical college submitted that both the private and government medical colleges are one and same for running the undergraduate and broad speciality postgraduate courses in terms of infrastructure, bed strength, clinical material, and faculty number requirement.

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It was further pointed out that there was no distinction under the MCI Regulations, 1999 between the Private and Government Medical Colleges. The plea contended that the 1999 Regulations applied uniformly to all the Colleges irrespective of what kind of colleges they are- Government or Private.

"Therefore, if the Regulations which apply to the said colleges are same, if the requirement of infrastructure etc. is same, the Union of India or the Medical Council of India (now National Medical Commission) is bound to treat all the Colleges equally and are bound to give the intake capacity as per the available infrastructure of that College," argued the plea filed through AOR Sudhanshu Choudhari.

As per the latest media report by Live Law, when the counsel for the petitioner college referred to the fact that the authorities would continue framing policies for the government medical colleges alone, the top court bench observed,

"Let them do it. We are happy that at times, they are in favour of the Government Medical Colleges rather than being partial to Private medical colleges. And you know the reasons why there are partial to Private medical colleges, we need not say anything!."

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