The Madras High Court Bench here on Wednesday directed the State government to spell out its stand on two notifications issued by Medical Council of India (MCI) on March 10 for conducting a common State-wide counselling on the basis of merit list of National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test (NEET) for all admissions to undergraduate as well as postgraduate courses in all medical educational institutions.
Justice V. Parthiban directed the government advocate to obtain instructions from the Health Secretary by Tuesday since the counselling for PG courses was scheduled to be held on April 4.
“Let us know how do you [the State government] propose to deal with the situation. We need some clarity on the issue, especially in the light of the Constitutional right of minorities, to administer educational institutions,” he told the counsel.
The judge was seized of two writ petitions filed by the chairman of Padanilam Welfare Trust, which runs linguistic minority educational institutions in Kanyakumari district, challenging the validity of MCI notifications amending Regulations on Graduate Medical Education, 1997 and Postgraduate Medical Education Regulations, 2000 and introducing new provisions for conducting common counselling in every State.
Senior Counsel Isaac Mohanlal, representing the petitioner institution, brought it to the notice of the court that the State government had opposed NEET in its entirety. “In fact, the Tamil Nadu Assembly has unanimously passed a Bill to bypass admissions in engineering and medical colleges through NEET and the proposed law is pending before the President for his assent. The State government is completely against NEET,” he said.
When the judge wanted to know how would self financing minority colleges make admissions if the MCI notifications, under challenge now, had not been issued, the Senior Counsel said that in such a case, the colleges would enjoy the right to fill up 50% of seats in undergraduate medical courses and 100% seats in postgraduate courses by giving due preference to minorities and without compromising merit too.
V.P. Raman, counsel for MCI, told the court that Christian Medical College Ludhiana Society had filed a similar case before the Supreme Court questioning the right of minority institutions to admit students in view of introduction of NEET. Though that case was filed even before the issuance of the latest MCI notifications, the legal issue raised in that case was the same as it had been raised in the present cases, he said and pointed out that the apex court had posted that case for hearing on Friday.
He also undertook to obtain instructions from the MCI by Tuesday as to how did it propose to go about conducting the counselling for medical admissions this year.
