MCI playing with docs: SC

The Supreme Court on Wednesday slammed the Medical Council of India (MCI) and the Centre for allowing 1,456 super speciality seats in super speciality medical courses for the academic year 20212022 to go vacant.

Candidates who passed in the competitive Neet PG are knocking the doors of the top court for admission into the vacant seats.

Taking a dim view of

MCI and the authorities including DGHS for sitting on the vacant seats since May 7, 2022, when the last round of counselling took place, Justice M.R. Shah heading a vacation bench comprising Justice Aniruddha Bose said that while the country was running short of specialist doctors, the authorities are sitting on vacant seats allowing them to go waste instead of holding a mop up round of counselling to admit eligible candidates.

The court sought to know why there was no “streamlining of the process” of admission and questioned if authorities know how stressed out the students are after studying hard but not sure of getting an admission.

“It is their future which is at stake, Where are we leading to,” the bench observed. The court asked the MCI and the Centre to file a detailed affidavit giving reasons why the vacant seats were not being filled up. The court posted the matter for further hearing on Thursday.

Giving vent to the court’s ire, Justice Shah said, “This is an important matter. It concerns their (the students) rights. You are playing with the future of the (medical) students. Why are you not filling it up and have a mop up round? You can have it in one week. These are super speciality seats. We are short of doctors,” and asked if any representative of the DGHS was present in court in connection with the proceedings.