Bombay High Court: State trying to place restrictions on medical colleges

The Bombay high court came down heavily on the state and admonished it for seeking relief to allow admissions to private medical colleges to go on, as they had to be completed by September 30. Chief Justice (CJ) Manjula Chellur has posted the matter for Friday and is expected to dictate the order the same day.

The division bench of the CJ and Justice J.J. Sonak was hearing a petition filed by private medical colleges that complained that the state was trying to interfere in their admission process. The petitioners prayed that while they were willing to admit students as per the NEET rankings, the state of Maharashtra had announced new rules on August 18 and amended the same on September 2 asking private medical and dental colleges to admit students based on domicile. The state’s order asked private medical colleges in the ongoing admission process to give admissions based on domicile i.e., to students from Maharashtra.

Advocate general Rohit Deo, while arguing for the state, said that the regulation was intended to provide some sort of solution to the shortage of doctors problem in the state and if students from outside were allowed to take admission in private medical colleges they would not stay back and thus the shortage of doctors problem could not be addressed. “The state requests the court not to give any interim order as the admission process is at the fag end and has to be completed by September 30. The court should allow admissions to continue as per the challenged regulations,” said Mr Deo.

Countering the argument, advocate Vijay Thorat on behalf of the petitioners said that in India out of the 19 states that had private medical colleges, only Gujarat and

Delhi had domicile-based admissions. “Private colleges in the remaining states have admissions based on the all India NEET ranking and if at all there is some domicile-based admissions it is due to an agreement between the colleges and the state. In none of the states has the government dictated the admission process. Hence the state government should not have any say too,” he said.

Based on the arguments Justice Sonak observed that the state was trying to implement unreasonable restrictions by asking private colleges to conduct admissions based on domicile. He added that reservations by the state was against the rights enjoyed by colleges as espoused in Article 19 (6).