Tuesday, August 13, 2013

Allot equal PG seats to govt, private medical colleges

Allot equal PG seats to govt, private medical colleges: HC

JABALPUR: A division bench of MP high court has directed the state government to adhere to a 50:50 distribution ratio of post graduate seats in the state-run and private medical colleges. Justice Rajendra Menon and Justice Vimla Jain made it mandatory for the director, medical education to follow the directions during counseling for medical PG seats scheduled this month.

Taking a serious view of allegations about private medical colleges auctioning PG seats to moneyed and unworthy for as high as Rs 2 crore, the bench disallowed the state's plea for four weeks time to file its reply, considering the delay could adversely affect young careers. The next hearing in the case will be held on August 26.

The court had admitted the PIL filed by a medical student Dr Shailednra Singh and others on Thursday who expected a post graduate seat strictly according to merit list after the last round of counseling on August 21. The PIL had charged the state medical education authorities with deliberately creating congenial conditions for the private colleges to usurp as many seats from the PG quota as they wished.

The most sought after seats in the streams like radiology, orthopedic surgery and gynecology the petitioner alleged had been hijacked in bulk by these private institutions and the state medical colleges have no access to them. This trend has caught on due to mushrooming private medical colleges across the state- that have no moral compulsions but were commercializing the medical profession.

The counsel for petitioner Aditya Sanghi submitted that in a clever manner to ward off criticism, the authorities has diverted subjects like anesthesia and other non-clinical streams - which apparently have few takers - to the state-owned medical colleges.

Questioning the duplicity and therefore intention of the concerned authorities, the counsel quoted the Supreme Court's judgment in the Modern Dental College and Research Centre, Indore versus state of MP in his favour where Justice Markandey Katju and Justice Deepak Verma had ruled that PG seats had to be divided in three parts. After reserving 15% under the NRI quota, the rest of the 85% seats should be distributed equally between the state and private colleges.


Moreover the distribution, as per the directive will apply to each subject and not to the bulk to beat the insidious game plan which, the petitioner had claimed, had pushed practically all the coveted streams out of the reach of meritorious students so far.

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