New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Friday permitted self-financing medical colleges in Kerala to admit non-domiciliary candidate against the vacant seats under the non-resident Indian (NRI) quota of 15%.
Permitting the self-financing medical colleges (SFMC) in Kerala to admit candidates from outside Kerala against the vacant NRI seats, the bench of Justice S.A. Bobnde and Justice B.R. Gavai expressed surprise over Kerala government inserting requirement of domiciliary for admission in medical courses under NRI 15% NRI quota.
“You can’t restrict NRIs to domiciliary. For NRI seats you want domicile? We don’t know any precedent where NRI seats are tagged with domiciliary requirement”, Justice Bobde said as senior counsel Shyam Divan appearing for the SFMC objected to this requirement of domiciliary.
As senior counsel Jaideep Gupta appearing for Kerala told the court that as against the 3000 seats there were 43000 applicants and there were enough NRIs of Kerala origin, Divan pointed out that last year a number of seats went unfilled in the NRI category because of this domiciliary clause. At the outset of the hearing Gupta informed the court that state government has permitted SFMC to fill 15% seats from all India quota — a decision welcomed by the senior counsel Divan.
Divan urged the court to permit the SFMC to say that candidates seeking admission may have to furnish the bank guarantee to cover up any hike in the fee — a matter pending before the court.
