Taking a serious view of 26 merit students being denied admissions in medical colleges, the Supreme Court has directed the Maharashtra Government to pay Rs. 20 lakhs as compensation to each student and recover the amount from the officers guilty of dereliction of duty.
A Bench of Justices J. Chelameswar and A.K. Sikri in a recent order said “It is an unfortunate situation where directions given by this Court with a view to ensuring compliance with the mandates of the Constitution in the matter of admissions to various courses run by unaided private educational institutions is allowed to remain only a paper declaration. The directions of this Court mandating the constitution of the committee to monitor the whole process to ensure that these educational institutions do not flout the constitution mandate and the legal obligations are not adhered to.”
The bench said “though the relief such as the one sought by the petitioners {seeking admissions in medical colleges} cannot be granted at this stage in view of the long lapse of time, we are of the opinion that the petitioners are certainly entitled to public law damages. State of Maharashtra is directed to pay an amount of Rs. 20 lakhs to each one of these petitioners towards public law damages and such payment should be made within four weeks. We also direct Maharashtra to indentify the officers who are responsible for the inaction on the report of the Monitoring Committee dated 11th January, 2013 and take appropriate action against those officers including the recovery of the amount (to be paid pursuant to this order, by the State) from those officers.”
The petitioners Krina Ajay Shah and 25 other took the examination conducted by the Association of Management of Unaided 1Medical and Dental colleges, Maharashtra during 2012-13 and none of them could secure admission in a course of their choice. On a complaint from them the Maharasthra government conducted an enquiry.
The Committee recorded a finding that the admission process adopted by the members of the respondent association was faulty as less meritorious students had been admitted into the Colleges in preference to the more meritorious students. The government did not act on the report and their petitions were dismissed by the Bombay High Court. The present appeals were directed against this verdict and the Bench disposed of these appeals in the students favour granting each of them Rs. 20 lakhs compensation.
