Supreme Court issues notice to Madhya Pradesh, MCI in challenge to 100% reservation for State domicile students in PG Medical seats

The Supreme Court on Friday issued notice to the State of Madhya Pradesh and the Medical Council of India on a plea challenging the Admission Rules 2018 which provides 100% reservation for State domicile students in the post graduate medical courses (Association of Private Universities Madhya Pradesh v. State of Madhya Pradesh)..The plea by Association of Private Universities Madhya Pradesh challenged the Rules to the extent they apply to private unaided medical colleges.A Bench of Justices L Nageswara Rao and BR Gavai sought response of the State and MCI on the plea which assailed a decision of the Madhya Pradesh High Court which had refused to set aside the Rules..The High Court by a judgment delivered on September 21 had in fact deferred its decision citing a similar case pending before a larger Bench of the Supreme Court..The appeal before Supreme Court drawn by advocate Siddharth R Gupta and filed by advocate Mrigank Prabhakar sought directions to permit private unaided medical colleges to fill up seats on the basis of All India Merit list. The plea stated that reservation granted through the Admission Rules 2018 creates an anomalous situation of reservation contrary to the NEET Regulations and seriously compromises merit.The plea pointed out that the High Court had principally accepted this and other major contentions of the petitioner.But it did not decide the case citing pendency of the similar matter before apex court. The petitioner contended that majority of issues which the High Court has been confronted with in the present case are entirely different from the issues (except the domicile in PG Courses) from the matter referred to larger Bench of the Supreme Court in Tanvi Behl case..Besides, the High Court committed another manifest error in treating the reference to larger Bench as applicable to private unaided self-financing medical colleges, when admittedly the facts, issues and reference was purely in the context of a ‘Government Medical College’ and never in the context of private unaided self-financing medical college, the plea said..The petitioner therefore, sought a stay on the judgment of the High Court. The petitioner also sought directions to restrain the State government from publishing and going ahead with the counselling programme for admission to the PG Medical Courses for the ensuing academic year 2021-2022..[Read Order]