Supreme Court: In the judgment quashing Allahabad High Court’s decision in the matter relating to Institutional Preference, the Bench of Deepak Gupta and Ashok Bhushan, JJ. held that admissions to post-graduate courses in central universities cannot be regulated by the concerned States and that benefit to doctors serving in Provincial Medical Health Services (PMHS) for admissions to post-graduate courses should be allowed irrespective of their State of graduation.
The High Court had set aside the institutional preference at Aligarh Muslim University (AMU) and Banaras Hindu University (BHU) on its own cognizance without even including AMU, BHU as well as the selected candidates as parties to the case and had also held that Regulation 9(iv) of the Post Graduate Medical Education Regulations 2000 does not give benefit to doctors who had completed their MBBS/BDS outside the State of UP.
The Court, relying on Saurabh Chaudri v. Union of India, (2003) 11 SCC 146, upheld the 50% institutional preference in AMU and BHU. It further held that Regulation 9(iv) of the 2000 Regulations does not create any divide or distinction between doctors, and extends to even those doctors who had served in remote areas under PMHS but did their graduation from an institution outside the state of Uttar Pradesh. The Court said that once the graduate doctors are selected and join the medical health service in the State of U.P., they form part of one service, i.e. PMHS and when these doctors are posted to remote or difficult areas they are posted as doctors of PMHS and not on the basis as to which State they have done their graduation from.
The court also allowed AMU, BHU and other Government run medical institutions in the state to fill up the vacant seats till 12.06.2017 disposing off all the civil appeals and interlocutory application(s) related to the State of UP in WP No. 76 of 2015. [Dr. Saurabh Dwivedi v. Union of India, 2017 SCC OnLine SC 638, decided on 07-06-2017]
