The Madras High Court has upheld a clause in the prospectus that stipulated subjecting disabled candidates for admission in the first year MBBS course to an examination by a team of medical experts, at the time of counselling.
Justice K K Sasidharan upheld the clause, while dismissing a batch of writ petitions from T Nalini and three others seeking to set aside the clause and for a direction to the Selection Committee to admit them in the 2013-14 course.
The petitioners contended that even though they had produced the certificates issued by the District Medical Boards (DMBs), they were subjected to re-examination at the time of counselling. Once the medical certificate was issued by the DMB, it was not open to the selection committee to subject them to another medical examination, they contended.
Since the issue raised by the petitioner was serious, the judge directed the Directorate of Medical Examination (DME) to constitute a special medical team of four doctors, headed by Dr Rajasekaran, Professor and Head of the Department of Ortho in Madras Medical College.
The team examined the petitioners and found that they were not qualified for selection.
The judge observed that in some cases, the DMBs did not have ortho experts.
There was no dispute that for issuing a certificate like this, a specialised ortho surgeon should be a member of the DMB. In the absence of such an expert, the DMBs issued certificates with varying percentage of disability.
“This kind of casual manner of issuance of certificates would naturally give an impression that all is not well in the matter of assessment of disability by the DMB,’’ the judge said.
The judge, however, made it clear that the expert committee must consist of senior professionals and there should not be any room for complaints that the certificates issued by it were rejected by the panel members of the expert committee of the selection committee.
“The material available on record proved that the government was fully correct in incorporating the clause with regard to the confirmation of the medical certificate issued by the DMBs by the expert committee of the Selection committee at the time of counselling,’’ the judge said and dismissed the petitions.