Students back from war-hit Ukraine lost seats too: Delhi HC

New Delhi: Due to lack of adequate medical institutions providing quality affordable education to aspiring students, they are compelled to leave home country and pursue studies abroad and this reality has become a cause of concern when due to the conflict between Ukraine and Russia, thousands of Indian medical students have been brought back and have lost their seats in colleges, the Delhi HC said on Wednesday as it granted permission to increase the number of seats at a medical college in the city noting it would be against the public interest to deny this permission in this case.

The plea was to increase seats in post-graduate and undergraduate courses in Santosh Medical College, an institute being run and managed by Santosh Trust which was formally known as the Maharaji Educational Trust.

The reality of the lack of facilities for aspiring students here has especially become a cause for concern "when due to the conflict between Ukraine and Russia, several thousand Indian medical students, who had gone to pursue their medical education in the now war-hit Ukraine have been rescued and brought home, have also lost their seats in medical colleges," Justice Rekha Palli said in a 41-page judgement passed on Tuesday.

The court said that no doubt the authorities cannot be asked to lower the standards prescribed under the regulations however, simultaneously, in a situation like the present one, when it is found that an institute like the petitioner which has been running for the last over 20 years, not lacking in any infrastructure and has also rectified the deficiencies found at the time of initial inspections on account of pandemic, it would also be against public interest to deny permission to the petitioner to increase the seats.

At a time when the ratio of medical profession vis-a-vis the population of the country is abysmally low, an increase in the number of PG and UG seats would certainly contribute to the bigger goal of strengthening the medical infrastructure of the country, the court said.

The court quashed two orders of the National Medical Commission (NMC), represented through advocate T Singhdev, and directed it and other authorities to grant permission to the institute to increase the seats from 4 to 7 in MS (Obstetrics and Gynaecology), from 3 to 7 in MS (Orthopaedics), and from 100-150 in the MBBS course.

The court was dealing with a petition by the trust, which runs and manages a group of medical, dental, paramedical, and para-dental colleges/institutions in the National Capital Region, including the petitioner which is a medical educational institute, offering MBBS course and post-graduate courses.

The court ultimately granted permission to the college to participate in the remaining rounds of counselling with the increased seats without any further inspections. "The fact remains that the petitioner institute is an institution running for the last 28 years having produced a considerable number of doctors for the country, which is still unable to meet the aspirations of the younger generation to pursue medical studies. It is the respondents' own case that the petitioner institute has a valid permission for admitting students not only against 100 seats in MBBS but also in different PG courses, the court noted.