HC denies stay on MBBS admissions

July 17: The Bombay High Court today refused to grant a stay on the admission process of first year medical-dental course for the year 1997...

July 17: The Bombay High Court today refused to grant a stay on the admission process of first year medical-dental course for the year 1997-98.The petitioners will appeal before Supreme Court on Monday for interim relief, advocate Mukesh Vashi, appearing for the petitioners, told Express Newsline.

The decision came in the wake of a petition by two students challenging the new admission rules advocating region-wise distribution of seats as against distribution on the basis of university area. The division bench of Justice Ashok Agarwal and Justice S D Gundewar admitted the petition, but denied any interim relief.

The petitioners prayed for admissions on the basis of the university regions of medical-dental colleges, excepting three medical and one dental college run by the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation. The other prayer was that medical colleges should insist on a domicile certificate from the students seeking admission.

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The new rules were framed by the state government following a full-bench order, stated additional advocate general Bal Apte. He maintained that the criteria for seat distribution cannot be decided by the court.

The new admission rules had clubbed eight university areas into three regions viz. Vidarbha, Marathwada and rest of Maharashtra, with respective merit lists. Accordingly, the division of medical seats in Vidarbha and Marathwada regions virtually continues to be on university area basis since each region has only two universities.

While the rest of Maharashtra region has four universities and three time the number of colleges. Due to this system, students of the Mumbai University area suffer, according to Vashi.

The Mumbai university area, under the rest of Maharashtra region, has 12 colleges (nine medical and three dental) which have been sought to be clubbed with other university areas like Satara, Kolhapur and Dhule (spanning a radius of over 600 kms). The petitioners are students from such `clubbed’ merit lists under the rest of Maharashtra category, according to the petition.

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While admissions in all other professional courses (engineering, BAMS,BHMS, architecture etc) continue to be on university area basis, MBBS and dental admissions are done region-wise. The Mumbai University area with more than 1000 seats (larger than Vidarbha and Marathwada regions combined) falls in one of the largest regions, Vashi pointed out.

The petition maintained that due to the fact that only one regional merit list is prepared for all the areas falling under the rest of the Maharashtra region, out of the first 500 seats available for Mumbai University region, only 165 students are from Mumbai.