Mumbai: The Nagpur bench of the Bombay High Court (HC) on Friday temporarily allowed the admission of two MBBS students who got their seats in the institute-level round that was invalidated by the National Medical Commission (NMC).
The duo has challenged a circular issued by NMC last week to cancel 141 admissions made in the last stray vacancy round of MBBS admission in the state.
Petitioners' admission should not be disturbed: Court
In an interim order, a bench of justices Abhay Mantri and AS Chandurkar, said that the admission of the petitioners shouldn't be disturbed, as it issued notices to NMC, the state Common Entrance Test (CET) Cell and the medical college to which they were allotted seats.
The unprecedented move by NMC, the apex body for medical admission, was prompted by the state's decision to let the institutes conduct counseling for the vacant seats in the last round of undergraduate (UG) medical admissions, instead of following NMC's directive of carrying out the entire admission process in centralised online mode.
The eleventh-hour shift from centralised to institute-level admission came under fire from several aspirants who claimed that it allowed colleges to block the seats and allot it to their favoured candidates. The NMC's reversal, which came 18 days after the admissions closed on September 30, has become a cause of anxiety for 141 students who got their seats in the last round.
The petitioners argue that they had simply acted on the basis of a public notice by the CET Cell to claim the seats that were available after three regular rounds of admissions and one centralised stray vacancy round.
State govt to hand over counselling to colleges
Meanwhile, the state government also stands by its decision to hand over the counselling to colleges. In response to NMC, the state medical education department has asserted that the institute-level admissions were conducted according to the state's admission rules. The state has also referred to an HC verdict, issued last week, where it was ruled that the state's PG admission rules allowing institute-level counseling will prevail over NMC's directive.
The court, in its order, however, noted that the state lacked clarity on this issue and asked it to seek the medical education body's guidance before taking any action. Despite the green signal from the court, the state, unlike MBBS admissions, went on to conduct PG admissions completely in a centralized manner.
