Supreme Court Relief! WB Doctors' PG Degrees Who Completed Studies By July 2022 UPHELD
Supreme Court of India
New Delhi: Modifying its earlier order, the Supreme Court has now granted relief to many medical professionals in West Bengal by ensuring that those who completed their studies by July 2022 and were employed as senior residents would retain their degrees as legal and valid.
The top court bench on 17.10.2022 refused to consider their admission to the PG courses (for the 2019-2020 academic year) beyond the cut-off date of May 31, 2019.
Medical Dialogues had earlier reported that back in 2022, the top court bench had reiterated the need for strictly adhering to the admission time schedule and accordingly cancelled the PG medical admission of eight MBBS doctors, who had been earlier given relief by the Calcutta High Court.
However, the Apex Court bench of Justices Ajay Rastogi and CT Ravikumar had set aside the HC order while noting that the High Court had ignored the principles of merit while granting provisional admissions to those doctors and later while regularising them.
The case concerned eight MBBS doctors, who after clearing the NEET-PG 2019 examination, sought admission in the State quota seats in Post-graduate medical courses in medical colleges of West Bengal for the academic year 2019-2020. For the concerned year, the cut-off date for admission was May 31, 2019. However, even after the cut-off date, approximately 153 State quota PG medical seats remained vacant and the concerned students failed in their attempt after participating in the last counselling in securing admission to postgraduate medical seat in any of the speciality because of their much lower rank in the order of merit.
Even though the HC had granted them relief, the top court bench cancelled their admissions while noting, "In our considered view, no sympathy can be shown to such students who have not only entered/admitted after 31st May of the year but their admissions were completely in contravention to the Regulations, 2000 and provisional admissions were granted by the High Court ignoring the principle of merit which is the sole touchstone for admission to the postgraduate courses based on the NEET examination, 2019 where admissions are made strictly in the order of merit cum preference and despite the stay order passed by this Court, if they are allowed to continue in postgraduate medical courses, the same would be completely illegal and such contemptuous action on the part of the authorities, cannot be approved by this Court."
Following this, the petitioner doctors filed a review petition before the Supreme Court and the matter was heard by a Division bench of Chief Justice Sanjiv Khanna, Justice Sanjay Kumar and Justice KV Vishwananthan.
As per the latest media report by Live Law, noting that the degrees were awarded to them in July 2022 i.e. before the date of the judgment, the Apex Court validated the medical degrees of the petitioners who had completed their education and were working as senior residents by July 2022.
"Having heard learned counsel for the parties and considering the peculiar facts and circumstances of the case, the present review petitions are entitled to be allowed to the extent that the review petitioners who have completed their studies in the month of July 2022 and were thereafter appointed and working as Senior Residents should not be deprived of their degrees. In other words, the degrees granted to them shall be treated as legal and valid, notwithstanding the judgment dated 17.10.2022 of this Court passed in the civil appeal," the Court was quoted noting by Live Law.
However, this relief was not extended to one of the petitioners as the Court noted that his studies were ongoing at the time of the judgment. Instead, the Court allowed the concerned petitioner to continue his studies at North Bengal Medical College, Darjeeling, West Bengal whole noting that he was prevented from continuing his further studies in view of the judgment dated 17.10.2022.
"Keeping in view the fact that Dr. ***Sharma has already studied for about three years, we permit her to continue and complete her studies at North Bengal Medical College, Darjeeling, West Bengal," observed the bench.
The top court bench also imposed a fine of Rs 5 lakh on West Bengal University of Health Sciences and North Bengal Medical College, holding them accountable for the litigation issues. The bench directed the University to deposit the amount in Chief Minister's Relief Fund, Government of West Bengal, within four weeks.
Also Read: NEET PG Admissions: Domicile-Based Reservation Unconstitutional!- Supreme Court
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