Telangana's private medical and dental colleges may fill up vacant seats till August 31, Supreme Court says

The Supreme Court on Thursday extended the cut-off date for filling the vacant postgraduate seats in medical colleges in the State of Telangana. These seats can now be filled up to August 31 (Telangana Private Medical and Dental Colleges Management Association v. UOI)..The Bench of Justices Rohinton Nariman, Navin Sinha, and Indira Banerjee heard a plea filed by the Telangana Private Medical and Dental Colleges Management Association which pointed out that many of the seats in private medical and dental colleges in the state are lying vacant..Due to the pandemic and the low influx of students in PG courses, there was a lack of doctors for COVID-19 duty, considering many of the PG students, being qualified MBBS doctors, were assigned on duty in COVID-19 wards..The State of Telangana has directed all private medical colleges to set up and operate COVID-19 wards in medial college hospitals. In compliance with the same, private colleges have been running these dedicated specialised wards. However, an acute shortage of doctors has arisen, the petition before the Supreme Court said..The PG students who were allocated duty in COVID-19 wards were often contracting the infection and had to be placed in quarantine, leading to a reduced number of doctors on duty. This situation could be remedied, the petitioner association argued in its plea, if the vacant seats in the PG medical colleges could be allowed to be filled through Court orders..A lowering of the existing cut-off marks was also sought by the organization. It pointed out that seats not only in the management quota, but also in the competent authority quota remained vacant this year..“With the prescribed minimum eligibility criteria for NEET-PG 2020, most of the PG seats were going vacant after counseling as there were insufficient number of eligible doctors. Therefore, the Central Government revised/lowered the minimum eligibility criteria and the cut-off marks. Even after that, most of the seats are still lying vacant.”Petition filed in Supreme Court.The association prayed for waiver of the eligibility cut-off marks criteria for this year’s admission process, citing the abysmally large number of vacancies and the acute shortage of doctors on the ground. The plea states,.“The Petitioners are seeking to allot seats in a merit-based objective manner in accordance with the marks obtained in the NEET-PG 2020 exam, however, without any qualification of cut-off marks.”.The Court, while allowing an extension of time to fill up the vacant seats till August 31, said that for the prayer of waiving off eligibility criteria, the association may approach the concerned authority for orders in accordance with the law. While extending the date for filling the seats, the Court said,.“Given the COVID-19 situation, we think it reasonable to extend, in the special facts of this case, for this year only, the cut-off date to 31.08.2020. We have been informed that there are a number of vacant seats both in the management quota as well as the competent authority quota. These may be filled up to the said cut-off date in accordance with the notice issued by NEET dated 14.07.2020.”.The association was represented by Senior Counsel KV Viswanathan with Advocates Ramesh Allanki, Siddhant Buxy, Priyanka Vora, Amartya Sharan, and Srinivasa Rao Pachwa..Read Order:.Read Petition: