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.