Medical with less than 50 pc

Thursday, January 22, 2009

New Delhi: The Delhi High Court directed the Maharashtra University of Medical College to allow about 200 applicants, who got less than 50 per cent marks in the competitive entrance examination held on all India basis by the CBSE for dental colleges in the country, to purse their medical degree as the rules were not made clear to them earlier.

Justice S Ravinder Bhat allowed Ashima Mittal and many others (approximately 200) to continue with their Dental Medical degree and told the Medical Council of India (MCI) to allow the students to appear in their exams.

The Court directed the Maharashtra University of Medical Sciences to rectify its rules as done by other Universities and implement them at an appropriate time.

The matter pertains to the petitions filed by the medical students of the Maharashtra University which stated that they appeared in the entrance test conducted by the CBSE under their 15 per cent quota for Medical/Dental colleges in the country.

The selection was done not on the basis of numbers but on the rank. About 3,200 seats, including waiting list, are reserved under the 15 per cent quota of the CBSE. Therefore, they were selected on the basis of rank.

R K Saini, lawyer for Aashima, told the court that her client’s admission in the BJ Medical College was only by rank but later some students were disqualified from appearing in the exams. The reason cited was that they were not eligible to appear in the examinations as they scored less than 50 per cent marks at the time of entrance.

The court in April had stayed the Maharashtra University’s decision and allowed the students to appear in the exams subject to the outcome of the court case.

Giving its final verdict, the court said the students were unaware of the rules which were formulated in 1997 by the MCI. The admissions had taken place without those rules being taken into account.