Mumbai: The Bombay high court has asked the Medical Council of India (MCI) and other authorities to conduct a surprise inspection of D.Y. Patil Medical College and directed them to allow the college to provisionally admit an additional 100 students to the MBBS course. The college had approached the court, challenging the MCI’s cancellation of permission to admit 100 students above its intake of 150 students for the academic year 2017-18 due to deficiencies in complying with resident doctor and faculty norms. The college had challenged the MCI order as it had been permitted to admit 100 more students in the last academic year.
A division bench of Justices Anoop Mohta and Bharati Dangre was hearing a writ petition filed by D.Y. Patil Medical College Hospital and Research, Navi Mumbai against the cancellation of permission to increase its intake capacity from 150 to 250 students for the MBBS course. The petition said that they had been permitted to increase their intake capacity by 100 for the academic year 2016-17 by the MCI, central government and director general of health sciences but the same had been cancelled for 2017-18.
While justifying the cancellation, the counsel for the union and MCI said that an inspection by a committee had revealed that the college did not conform to rules and there was a deficiency of teaching staff and resident doctors and hence permission for 100 additional students was denied for 2017-18.
The counsel for the college, however, argued that while there were no such deficiencies, they were willing to comply within two weeks. The college also argued that in the case of other colleges that were permitted an increase in intake capacity there was a shortage of teaching faculty and resident doctors by almost 30-50 percent, but they were allowed to admit additional students, hence they should also be allowed to admit 100 students more.
After hearing both sides, the court directed authorities to allow provisional admission of 100 additional students but also directed authorities to conduct surprise inspections to see to it that the college had overcome the deficiencies. The court while allowing the petition directed the college to comply with the norms too.
