Madras High Court reserves orders on pleas over 2015 MBBS admission

A division bench comprising Justices Satish K. Agnihotri and M. Venugopal, who reserved orders after hearing elaborate arguments from both sides, permitted the authorities to continue with counselling but did not permit seat allotments till the order is pronounced.

The bench was hearing an appeal filed by Kabhilan, which challenged a June 12 order of a single judge that said the consideration of students who had undergone plus-2 in the last academic year or earlier year is subject to the result of the petitions. A batch of 61 petitions filed by students of 2014-15 sought a direction to the authorities to confine the counselling of MBBS/BDS to those persons, who have passed plus-2 in the academic year 2014-15.

Opposing the same, another batch of over 100 petitions were filed by students, who have passed plus-2 during the previous academic years, which sought to implead them as parties in the case. Meanwhile, Dr S. Geethalakshmi, Director of Medical Education, filed a counter affidavit stating that the Tamil Nadu Admission to Professional, Educational Institutions Act, 2006 does not bar any previous year students from competing in the subsequent years.

She said the averments that the evaluation of last year answer paper of qualifying examination was very liberal compared to the current year and old students should not compete with the students of current year was not correct. No materials have been placed before this court to establish the petitioners’ unfounded and imaginary averments.

There was no provision in the said Act for normalisation of marks of the same board. There was no rule or guidelines issued by the Medical Council of India or by any other competent authority preventing the previous year students applying for admission to MBBS course along with the current year students, she added.