Pvt Indian medical, homeo colleges can fill up vacant seats

The Madras High Court upheld the decision by 13 Indian Medicine and Homeopathy colleges to fill up vacant seats on their own, noting that the seats that were not filled during government counselling would have otherwise gone waste.

“I hold that the writ petitioners (college managements) were well within their rights to fill up the vacant seats in the respective courses,” said Justice GR Swaminathan allowing a batch of petitions filed by the private college managements.

The colleges had prayed for a direction to the Directorate of Indian Medicine and Homeopathy Studies to approve the admissions for BAMS and BHMS courses in 2021-22 academic year without following the counselling procedures.

However, Government Pleader D Ravichander submitted that the colleges could not fill the seats on their own as the directorate has to fill both government and management quota seats through counselling. The GP and senior counsel P Wilson, standing counsel for the Tamil Nadu Dr MGR Medical University, submitted that as per the Supreme Court’s direction in 2020 in the Venkateshwara Medical College vs Medical Council of India case, private colleges could not fill the vacant seats on their own. However, the judge rejected the submission observing that the ruling of the apex court was applicable only to MBBS admissions and not to the Indian Medicine and Homeopathy courses.

Allowing the petitions, Justice Swaminathan also passed a slew of directions to the respondents to declare examination results for the students who got admitted in the colleges without counselling and also asked the respondents to issue hall tickets to the students who are awaiting examinations.