Supreme Court: The vacation bench of Deepak Gupta and Surya Kant, JJ has refused to grant extension of time to respective medical colleges/deemed universities for carrying out counselling for P.G. courses and has said,
“If we permit violation of schedule and grant extension, we shall be opening a Pandora’s box and the whole purpose of fixing a time schedule and laying down a regime which strictly adheres to time schedule will be defeated.”
The petition filed by Education Promotion Society for India which representing a large number of educational institutions including medical colleges running postgraduate (P.G.) medical courses that showed concern over the large number of seats in these colleges that are lying vacant. It was argued that there is an acute shortage of doctors in India and, in fact, the Union of India has permitted increase of seats in government medical colleges without increase of infrastructure
“this shows that the intention of the State is to ensure that more and more doctors pass out and treat the patients.”
The petitioner also cited various orders of this Court where extension of time was granted to medical colleges for carrying out counselling. On this the Court said,
“In this case the petitioners want a general extension of time not on account of any particular difficulty faced by any individual college or university but generally on the ground that a large number of seats for the P.G. courses are lying vacant.”
Taking judicial notice of the fact that every year large number of nonclinical seats remain vacant because many graduate doctors do not want to do postgraduation in nonclinical subjects, the Court said,
“Merely because the seats are lying vacant, in our view, is not a ground to grant extension of time and grant further opportunity to fill up vacant seats. The schedule must be followed.”
[Education Promotion Society for India v. Union of India, 2019 SCC OnLine SC 780, decided on 21.06.2019]
