Supreme Court Dismisses Plea Challenging Centre's 2018 Decision To Increase PG Seats In Government Medical Colleges Alone

The Supreme Court of India on Tuesday dismissed a plea challenging the Centre's decision granting one time increase in postgraduate seats for the academic year 2018-2019 in clinical courses (Broad Speciality) under revised teacher's ratio in Government medical colleges alone and not to the private medical colleges.

A Bench of Justices BR Bavai and Vikram Nath, during the hearing, said,

"Such a thing [Centre's decision] is coming up for the first time! Whenever matters were listed before me (in High Court), they were partial to Private medical colleges. And by judicial orders we had to increase the seats in private colleges....Fortunately those were upheld by the Supreme Court".

The petitioner advocate pointed out that the authorities would continue to frame policies in favour of government medical colleges only.

" Let them do it. We are happy that at times, they are in favour of the Government Medical Colleges rather than being partial to Private medical colleges. And you know the reasons why there are partial to Private medical colleges, we need not say anything!", the Bench remarked.

According to the petition, the Private medical colleges and the government medical colleges, in regard to infrastructure, bed strength, clinical material, faculty number requirement, for running the under graduate and broad speciality postgraduate courses, are one and the same.

There is no distinction whatsoever under the MCI Regulations, 1999 so far as Private Colleges and the Government Medical Colleges are concerned. The Regulations uniformly apply to all the Colleges irrespective whether they are Government Colleges or Private Medical Colleges.

"Therefore, if the Regulations which apply to the said colleges are same, if the requirement of infrastructure etc. is same, the Union of India or the Medical Council of India (now National Medical Commission) is bound to treat all the Colleges equally and are bound to give the intake capacity as per the available infrastructure of that College".

The petition was filed through AOR Sudhanshu Choudhari.

Case Title: Maeer's Maharashtra Institute Medical Education & Research vs Union of India | Writ Petition (C) 50/2018