Education – Admissions – Post Graduate Medical Admissions – Reduction in percentile fixed for eligibility – Plea for further reduction in the percentile – Held: Not tenable – Proviso to Regn. 9(3) of the Post-Graduate Medical Education Regulations stipulates that the Central Government has the power to lower the minimum marks for admission to PG courses in consultation with the National Medical Commission when a sufficient number of candidates fail to secure minimum marks – On facts, Central Government in exercise of this power had already reduced the minimum marks in consultation with the National Medical Commission – After stray rounds were conducted on the reduction in the percentile, only 282 seats are left vacant – Central Government has taken a considered decision to not reduce the minimum marks further – The Court would not be inclined to interfere unless there is a manifest arbitrariness in the decision making process or in the decision – There is no arbitrariness here – Responding to the vacancies, the Union Government took a decision after due consideration, of reducing the percentile by 15 – The Court would not be justified in the exercise of the power of judicial review to direct a further reduction of 5 percentile since that would be trenching upon the academic/policy domain – Post-Graduate Medical Education Regulations 2000 – Regn.9(3) – Judicial Review – Scope.
Education – Admissions – Post Graduate Medical Admissions – Need for filling up vacant seats vis-à-vis other considerations – Held: The need for filling up vacant seats, which undoubtedly is a matter of public interest has to be balanced with other considerations such as ensuring that the batch of admitted students commences the course, the standards of medical education are not diluted and uncertainty is not created by ad-hoc reductions in the norms of eligibility.
Harshit Agarwal v. Union of India, [Decision of two Judge Bench of Supreme Court in WP(C) 54 of 2021] – distinguished.
As published in the Supreme Court Reports, Supreme Court of India. Text from the Indian Supreme Court Judgments open data set (Dattam Labs), CC BY 4.0.
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