Read Time: 08 minutes

A Supreme Court bench of Justices MR Shah and Aniruddha Bose today remarked that merely because Post Graduate medical seats are lying vacant in medical colleges, the court cannot compromise on education and order a fresh round of counselling.

Court reserved the case for orders. It was dealing with a plea seeking directions to conduct special stray counselling round for vacant Post Graduate seats pertaining to academic year 2020-2021.

When the matter came up for hearing, the bench posed a series of questions to ASG Balbir Singh. Justice MR Shah said, “It's a question of 1456 medical seats. Government wants doctors of all kinds. They can serve the nation. These are not small number of seats.”

The bench informed the ASG that they were aware of the Medical Counseling Committee’s stand that a fresh round of counselling cannot be done as the software has to be re-opened for that. However, Court asked ASG not to consider the instant case as an adversarial litigation and look for a way to redress the points urged by the students.

ASG Balbir Singh submitted that the Supreme Court has interfered almost four times in this very session for NEET PG admission. Singh told the court that this is a structural issue and every year 600 or 700 seats go vacant every year. He argued that these seats pertain to non-clinical courses which the students themselves don’t prefer opting and almost 1100 out of the 1456 vacant seats belong to this category. He informed the court that majority of these seats were allotted to students but were not taken up by them.

He further submitted that the courses, for which the seats are vacant, don’t have employability potential and these seats have remained vacant in the last two or three sessions also. The ASG argued that these seats were offered to the students eight times (four times through All India Quota and four time through State quota) yet they remain vacant.

The ASG argued that the last counselling process ended on May 7, 2022. He said that reopening the counselling process would mean that the students will have to be informed again and security deposit will have to be collected again.

Furthermore, a representative from the Medical Counselling Committee told the Court that reopening the counselling for the academic year 2021 will affect the counselling for the year 2022. The ASG told the court that total number of vacant seats in private institutions are 1100 and 300 in government colleges. It was argued that most of the vacant seats are non-clinical  and academic. The ASG said, "They can’t make a career as a doctor by pursuing this course.”

On the other hand, the counsel for the petitioner argued that the counselling was abruptly stopped and the aspirants filed an RTI application seeking for the details of the number of vacant seats. She said, “The reply said that so many seats have been lying vacant because of non-joining, resignation or unknown reasons.”

Justice MR Shah remarked, “So somebody was allotted and they could not take seats up. There must be a limit to the exercise. Merely because some seats are vacant and earlier also seats have been vacant,  after 1.5 years, you demand admissions compromising health of people.”

The counsel retorted saying that the counselling process began only in January and 1.5 years have not elapsed as yet. The counsel for the petitioner argued that the entire stray counselling can be concluded in one day’s time.

The bench, however, opined that there is a requirement for well trained doctors and the students cannot be expected to complete a three year PG course in one and a half years.

Court, upon hearing the submissions of the parties, reserved the case for orders. Justice Shah remarked, “If we permit this, it will be perpetual. Counselling cannot go on and on.”

Yesterday the had bench remarked “ "If the students are not given admission, we'll pass orders for compensation for playing with the future of the Students.”

Case title: Astha Goel Vs Medical Counselling Committee