Maharashtra government declares MBBS admissions for 140 students null and void after National Medical Commission directive

Mumbai: About eight months after the National Medical Commission (NMC) directed the Maharashtra government to cancel the admissions of 141 MBBS students who had secured seats in an institute-level round, the state regulator has also declared the admissions of all but one student null and void.

About the decision

The Admission Regulating Authority (ARA) took this decision in a meeting held almost a month ago, even though the state government had earlier requested NMC, the apex body for medical education in the country, to grant these admissions. While one of the candidates had already obtained an interim order from the Supreme Court (SC) last year, the other students lacked such protection.

In October last year, the NMC directed the state and 16 medical colleges to cancel the admission of 141 candidates who had been admitted in the last round of admissions. This unprecedented move was prompted by the state’s decision to have the institutes conduct counselling for the vacant seats in the last round of undergraduate (UG) medical admissions. According to the NMC, this was in violation of a circular it issued in July directing the colleges to conduct the entire admission process in a centralised online mode.

As reported earlier by FPJ, many candidates who were allotted seats in the final round alleged that the colleges had denied them admission on flimsy grounds and instead admitted candidates who were ranked far below them. However, a state inquiry later gave a clean chit to one of the institutes, SSPM Medical College in Sindhudurg, against which four students from marginalized communities had complained. Following the NMC’s ​​action, the state did not immediately cancel the admissions but instead wrote to the commission asking it to reconsider its decision.

Earlier this year, NMC announced that even though the names of the 141 students were on the list of registered candidates, they could still be excluded after a verification process.

Decision challenged in Bombay HC

Meanwhile, the apex body’s decision was challenged by several candidates in the Bombay High Court. Petitions by three candidates were dismissed by the Nagpur court in November, holding that the state had no authority to issue the notification for the admission round for stray vacancies at the institute level as it had already conducted three regular and one centralised round for stray vacancies.

Published: Saturday, July 20, 2024, 09:57 AM IST