MADURAI: The Madurai Bench of the Madras High Court imposed a cost of Rs 5 lakh on the director of medical education (DME) in Chennai on a petition filed by a man over unethical and unprofessional acts committed during the MBBS/BDS selection process in 2017-18, which affected his daughter’s career.
Justice C Saravanan said the court could have ordered compensation had there been a clear admission of liability and fault by the director. Since the director has not filed a counter affidavit in the petition filed by VP Arunagiri in 2018, seeking compensation of Rs 50 lakh over the unethical practices during the selection process, the court is inclined to order the cost to be paid to Arunagiri. The court added it is open for the petitioner to file a suit for compensation on account of mental agony the petitioner’s daughter would have suffered.
The petitioner submitted that his daughter, AD Keerthana cleared NEET (UG) 2017 with 136 marks and was called for counselling on August 30, 2017. While her serial number was 43 of 46 earmarked for candidates belonging to the ST community, the petitioner claimed that the DME, through the selection committee, had accommodated others instead of her in the community quota.
The petitioner’s daughter got a BDS seat in a self-financed college. The petitioner highlighted that even if a candidate failed to attend counselling, the seat is to be allotted only to those eligible under the respective category, and in this case, the selection committee had violated the condition.
Though the petition is from 2018, no counter affidavit was filed by the director of medical education. However, Rajah Muthiah Dental College and Hospital in Chidambaram, affiliated with Annamalai University, where the girl got her BDS admission, filed a counter affidavit and said the letter submitted to the institution by her clearly mentions she was discontinuing the course owing to personal reasons.
The court said that with the advent of NEET for entrance into medical and dental colleges in the country, deserving students having domicile in the states have been at a partial disadvantage, as seats are allocated based on national ranking as per merits in the test, and may be allotted seats in far-flung areas of the country.
Inevitably, the government colleges in the state are compelled to accommodate students from across the country, leading to a scarcity of seats for students domiciled in the state. To compound the woes of students aspiring to enter the medical and dental professions, there appears to be a trend of seat swapping among candidates not due to any fault of their own but perhaps from the scarcity of seats and systemic defects in the current practice of allotment of seats to deserving candidates.
The court further noted that since no counter affidavit has been filed by the DME, it has to be construed that the director has admitted to the mistakes committed by overlooking the legitimate rights of the petitioner’s daughter.