PG Medical Courses: SC Declines to Set Aside Bombay HC Order Upholding 20% Quota for In-Service Candidates in Maharashtra

MEDICAL Law Insider

Bhuvana Marni

Published on: October 21, 2022 at 19:02 IST

On Thursday, the Supreme Court of India declined to set aside a decision by the Bombay High Court upholding the 20% in-service candidate reservation for PG Medical programmes in Maharashtra, which would take effect in the 2022–2023 academic year.

While declining to set aside the High Court’s judgment, a division bench of the court of Justices DY Chandrachud and Hima Kohli stated, “In our opinion, the judgment of the High Court does not fall for interference owing to the above reasons.”

The Court was debating a case that contested Maharashtra’s 20% in-service reservation for post-graduate medical admission. The government resolution from September 26 that authorized a 20% in-service reservation for in-service applicants was the case’s key factor.

The petitioners’ Senior Counsel, Anand Grover, argued that the relevant government resolution was made after the admissions process had started.

He was even relieved by a Supreme Court decision that said that once the admissions process has started, the game rules cannot be altered.

Second, he claimed that no data had been gathered by the State government prior to the resolution’s introduction.

This, he claimed, was clear from the fact that just 69 people applied for the NEET PG, despite their being 286 seats available for in-service quota out of 1416 seats for PG medical students. 52 of the applicants were admitted. He claimed that the 20% reserve was therefore disproportionate.

Abhay Dharmadhikari, the standing counsel for the Maharashtra government, argued that there had been no mid-stream modification to the criteria controlling the admission.

He said that the conditions of the state government’s brochure expressly indicated that in-service reservations would follow such resolutions as the government occasionally issued.

Senior counsel Sanjay Hegde stated that the students who received admissions during the first round of counselling are not parties to the proceedings and that there has been no challenge to the government resolution in question.

The government resolution from September 26th, which allowed for a 20% in-service reservation for in-service applicants, was the main principle that the court had examined.

This resolution did not specify whether in-service candidates could apply for the current academic year or not because the regulations had changed after the admissions process had started.

The Court took into account the fact that Maharashtra had a 30% in-service quota for degree programmes up to 2017. After the Dinesh Singh Chauhan case, it was under cloud.

A Constitutional Bench of the Apex Court decided that the State is permitted to establish reservations for in-service quota for PG courses. Out of the 1416 PG medical seats in the state of Maharashtra, the intervenors in the case informed the Bench that 282 were set aside for candidates who were already employed.

To apply for in-service reservations, 268 of them received No-objection certifications from their departments. 69 pupils were considered qualified for the first round of counselling since they scored higher than the cut-off. Admission was given to 52 applicants.

The Government of India announced on October 17 that the cutoff scores for the NEET PG test will be reduced by 25 percentiles for all categories. This too was another aspect that the Court took into consideration.

“The Court has been apprised of the fact that following the above decision, it is likely that additional candidates would become eligible to participate in the subsequent rounds of counselling”, the Bench’s order recorded.

Case Title: Nipun Tawari and Ors. vs. State of Maharashtra and Ors. SLP(C) No. 18616/2022

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