SC Allows Nagaland Student’s Plea For Admission To Medical College Under Central Pool Quota Despite Expiry Of Admission Cut-off Date

The Supreme Court, on Monday, allowed a petition filed by a student from Nagaland, directing AN Magadh Medical College, Gaya, Bihar to admit her under the Central Pool Quota despite expiry of the last date for admissions.

The judgment was rendered by a Bench comprising Justice SA Bobde and Justice L Nageswara Rao on the petition filed by one Ms. Akumsenla Jamir. While Ms. Jamir was represented by Advocate Amit Kumar Singh, the respondent medical college was represented by Advocates Gopal Singh and Manish Kumar.

The Centre allots MBBS and BDS seats every year from the Central Pool to various beneficiary States and Union Territories. The State of Nagaland is one such beneficiary, having no medical college in the State.

Consequently, the Centre, on August 30, allotted an additional seat to the State of Nagaland in AN Magadh Medical College under the Central Pool quota for academic session 2018-19. The seat was allotted a day before the last date on which students could be admitted, according to the timeline fixed by the Supreme Court in Ashish Ranjan & Ors. v. Union of India & Ors.

Ms. Jamir was consequently nominated by the State for the seat only on September 4. She reached the college on September 9, but was denied admission on the ground that the last date, i.e. August 31, as fixed by the Supreme Court, had already expired.

She had now pointed out that the delay was not because of any fault of her own and had submitted,  “…the Petition has been found eligible to be nominated under the Central Pool quota which is purely based on the merit list prepared by NEET. That being eligible, the Petitioner will suffer irreparable injury due to no fault of hers because of the last-minute allocation of seat by Respondent No. 1. Admittedly there is a vacant seat in Respondent No. 3 College which has now been allotted to the Petitioner by Respondent No. 4 State which will remain unfilled if the Petitioner is not allowed to get admitted in the College.”

Ms. Jamir had further asserted that the denial of admission to her was violative of Articles 14, 15, 21 and 300A of the Constitution of India. She had, therefore, demanded that she be admitted to AN Magadh Medical College, to pursue her MMBS course for the academic session 2018-19, despite the delay.