Chennai: The Madras high court has directed authorities not to disturb the admission of 59 candidates in the post graduate programme of SRM Medical College Hospital and Research Centre (SRM University) until further orders. Passing interim orders on a petition from SRM Medical College Hospital and Research Centre, a division bench comprising Justices S. Nagamuthu and Anita Sumanth gave the directive and said the admission of these 59 candidates shall be subject to the outcome of the main petition. The authorities shall not allot any candidate against these 59 seats, which have already been filled by the university, the bench added.
The bench also ordered notice to the Union and State governments and Medical Council of India and posted to April 26 further hearing of the petition, which sought to declare as unconstitutional, the Regulation 9A of Postgraduate Medical Education Regulations 2000 as amended by Postgraduate Medical Education (Amendment) Regulations, 2017. Petitioner’s counsel B. Saraswathi submitted that it was only after selections were completed by March 3 that the Union government had directed all the deemed-to-be universities that they shall also be part of common counselling for admission in PG courses. The MCI amended the PG Medical Education Regulations on March 10 adding Regulation 9A relating to common counselling and a notification was published the next day. Being only an amendment for the procedure for common counselling for Neet students, it will have effect from the date of communication viz., March 10. When once the admissions have been completed, such admissions cannot be undone or set aside by a subsequent notification, which would seriously jeopardise the interest of students as well as the University, Saraswathi added.
The bench said senior counsel V.T.Gopalan submitted that 1,382 candidates had applied and 126 candidates appeared for counselling, of whom 59 were admitted. He also submitted that since two more vacancies were there, the candidates were selected and given seats by the management from out of the open market. “Regarding those 2 candidates, who had not applied and who had not been selected based on the not comer, we are not inclined to give any interim protection. These two seats shall be treated as vacant. 17 more non-clinical PG posts are there. Therefore, the state selection committee may conduct counselling for these 17 PG vacancies and two clinical vacancies. Thus, making total 19”, the bench added.
The bench said, "We are also informed that the petitioner college has informed all the 59 candidates that they were at liberty to make applications to the state selection committee, seeking selection. If that be so, these 59 candidates are free to participate in the counselling to be held by the state selection committee and in such counselling, if they are allotted any seat, they can opt to take the said seat and join".
