Supreme Court dismisses review petition of MBBS students admitted through private counseling

The Supreme Court in the case of Abdul Ahad and Ors v. Union of India and Ors has observed that the medical admission conducted through private counseling is illegal. No sympathies can be shown to students who have entered through the backdoor, the Supreme Court observed while dismissing review petitions filed by some medical students. Some medical students had approached the Apex Court challenging the discharge order issued by the Medical Council of India to the Global Medical College directing discharge of 67 students admitted by it. They submitted that they were admitted through the counseling conducted by the Global Medical College and they have also cleared the 1st year and 2nd year examination. Opposing their plea, the MCI and the State of Uttar Pradesh submitted that they were admitted by backdoor entry and that their admission is the result of collusion between the Global Medical College and them. The court noted that there is a notification issued by the State of Uttar Pradesh prescribing centralized counseling for all institutions for admission to MBBS/BDS courses in the State, based on NEET 2016. Though minority institutions were allowed to admit the students of their community based on Centralized Counseling held by the State on the basis of NEET 2016, the same was to be done without deviating from the merit of the said students. The bench observed that, it could thus clearly be seen that the private counseling by Global Medical College was conducted contrary to the Notification issued by the State of Uttar Pradesh, which Notification, in turn, was based on the judgment of this Court in the case of Modern Dental College and Research Centre (supra), which was decided on 2nd May, 2016. The court observed that the notification issued by the State of Uttar Pradesh clearly provided that the admissions were to be done only the centralised admission process. In light of this position, it was not at all permissible for the Global Medical College to have conducted private counseling. The admissions which were conducted through the said private counseling cannot be termed as anything else but per se illegal. Though we have all the sympathies with the students, we will not be in a position to do anything to protect the admissions, which were done in a patently illegal manner.