COVID-19 pandemic taken advantage of to stage-manage and fill medical seats with unmeritorious candidates: Madras High Court orders CB-CID probe

Opining that there appeared to be a larger design to give medical college seats to unmeritorious candidates who were able to pull strings, the Madras High Court has ordered a CB-CID inquiry into whether there was a conspiracy between the Directorate of Medical Education and self-financing colleges in the filling up of stray vacancies this year..While dealing with petitions by medical candidates aggrieved over their being denied allotment into PG medical courses after mop-up counselling in various self-financing medical colleges, Justice Anand Venkatesh took critical note that candidates who had obtained less marks had been given the medical seats..Merit given a go-bye: High Court says.On analysing the details of admissions this year to self-financing medical colleges this year, the Madras High Court has observed,."Candidates who have really worked hard and secured higher marks... will surely get an impression that there is something beyond merit that can secure admission to a candidate and which is the purchasing power... There is something more than what meets the eye when it comes to filling up seats in private medical colleges other than by way of counselling. Obviously, these are all candidates who are capable of pulling strings and already had a clear understanding with the concerned college. When the push comes to the shove, the prior understanding translated itself into a final action and the candidates got admitted into the course. Every year some mechanism is devised by the self-financing colleges to fill up vacancies in this manner.".Expressing his disapproval over this state of affairs, Justice Venkatesh has also commented,."A society which perpetrates or encourages or celebrates mediocrity is bound to sink and perish at some point of time. This is more so when it comes to dealing with education and more particularly medical education."Madras High Court.He added,"A State can never take the chance of filling up a medical seat vacancy with an unmeritorious candidate since it directly involves the life of a person. That is the reason why the Hon’ble Supreme Court reiterates time and again that when it comes to postgraduate courses and super specialty courses, merit can be the only criteria of selection. This is an area which is safely guarded to ensure that merit is not compromised by replacing it with mediocrity... merit has been given a go-by and self-financing colleges have been allowed to fill up certain important clinical seats with candidates who were right down under the ladder of the merit list and thereby mediocrity gained an upper hand by using the loopholes under the prevailing system.".COVID-19 situation being taken advantage of to fill seats with unmeritorius candidates: Court.In this case, the Court was informed that many seats in the Government quota were not filled as those allotted the seats in the first two rounds of counselling and the mop-up counselling were not able to report for admission since they were engaged in COVID-19 duties or because of COVID-19 movement restrictions. .The Judge, however, made critical note that, "There is an attempt to put every blame on the Corona Virus even where it did not have a direct nexus to the action performed by an institution or any instrumentality of the State. There cannot be a greater sin than to make use of the present situation and gain advantage for one’s own self-aggrandizement.".An extension round of mop-up counselling was conducted from August 24-30 with respect to filling-up Government Quota seats. .However, when it came to vacant seats in the Management Quota seats, the Court took note that the selection committee confined to sending a list of candidates from which the self-financing colleges may pick the allottees. .No plea was made to extend time to conduct mop-up counselling, as the Supreme Court had already granted repeated extensions by then. The Government indicated that it was not optimistic at the time that further extension would be given. .The Court, however, pointed out, "... nothing stopped the Respondents from conducting the mop-up counselling parallelly for filling up the vacancy in the Management Quota also. For reasons best known to the Respondents, this option was never exercised. As a result, 74 seats were given in a platter to the private colleges and these colleges merrily filled up the vacancies with candidates who could not even have dreamt of getting an allotment during regular counselling.".The Judge added, "During this academic year, the pandemic has been taken advantage of to stage-manage and fill up nearly 74 seats with unmeritorious candidates.".CB-CID Probe ordered.The Court ultimately concluded that there appeared to be a conspiracy between self financing colleges and the Directorate of Medical Education. There is more than what meets the eye warranting a thorough investigation by a neutral agency, the Court opined. .Justice Venkatesh added that "the citizens of this country must be satisfied that merit is not compromised when it comes to post-graduate medicine and superspecialties.".Therefore, the High Court has ordered that a copy of the judgment be marked to the Director-General of Police, Tamil Nadu who is to allot the case immediately to the CB-CID..The CB-CIB Team is to be headed by an office not below the rank of an Assistant Commissioner, the Court added. The scope of enquiry is to be broadly as followsWhether there was any conspiracy between the officials of the Directorate of Medical Education and self-financing colleges in filling up stray vacancies on this year;The amount received from each candidate who was admitted by the self-financing colleges on August 31Any other matter that unfolds during investigation..A report on the probe is to be submitted before the Court by February 1, 2021.