The Madras High Court has highlighted the necessity for Dental Council of India (DCI) to revisit its regulations on the migration of Bachelor of Dental Surgery (BDS) students from one college to another.
Chief Justice Amreshwar Pratap Sahi and Justice Senthilkumar Ramamoorthy have pointed out the necessity for the DCI to permit migration on reasonable grounds in a wider range of situations. They said the regulations in force at present permit students to migrate to second year of BDS course only on two kinds of exigencies — death of supporting guardian or disturbed conditions, if any, declared by the government in a dental college area.
Pointing out that students could be allowed to migrate even on grounds of physical violence, sexual harassment and so on, the first Division Bench said the circumstances in which migration could be permitted on compassionate grounds must be taken as illustrative and not exhaustive.
The court made the observations while disposing of a writ appeal preferred by DCI, through its counsel S. Haja Mohideen Gisthi, against a single judge's order to permit migration of a student from one private college to another and admit her directly in the third year of BDS course.
The Bench pointed out that the circumstances under which the student had sought for migration could not be termed as unreasonable since she had been fighting with the college since 2014 with regard to demand of exorbitant fees and had even obtained a Transfer Certificate in the fond hope of completing her studies at least after migrating to another college which had agreed to admit her in the third year of the course subject to DCI approval.
However, since the DCI rules permit migration only in the second year of the course, the court permitted her to make an application for joining the second year and ordered that her application should be considered within four weeks in the light of the observations made in the present judgement.
