The Supreme Court on Monday directed a private medical college to pay ₹10 lakh in compensation to a student for illegally denying her admission to a postgraduate course this academic year.
A Bench led by Justice L. Nageswara Rao also ordered Kamineni Academy of Medical Sciences and Research Centre in Hyderabad to allocate Mothuru Sriyah Koumundi a seat in M.S. (General Surgery) course from the management quota for 2021-22.
The judgment by Justice Rao said Ms. Koumundi “lost one precious academic year for no fault of hers, for which she has to be compensated by way of an amount of ₹10 lakh to be paid by the college within a period of four weeks from today.”
With this, the court has extended the application of its 2019 judgment in the S. Krishna Sradha case, which empowered courts to direct private medical colleges to not only pay compensation but also admit a student wrongly denied admission in an under-graduate course, to post-graduate medical courses too.
The student’s version of events was that she had visited the college with her father on July 29 and 30, but her admission process was not completed. On the other hand, the college said she did not visit the college on these days. However, the latter’s version did not hold water as the college’s own affidavit in the State High Court revealed that the student and her father had visited the college on July 29 and paid the university fee.
Besides, the college had extended the last date of admission by a month and admitted another student who was 20,000 ranks below her. Justice Rao noted that there was enough time for the college to notify her, but it did not.
“The manner in which the college acted in depriving admission to Respondent No. 1 [Ms. Koumundi] and giving admission to Respondent No. 5 on August 11 is deplorable. The managements of medical colleges are not expected to indulge in such illegalities in making admissions to medical courses,” Justice Rao observed in the judgment.
Though the Bench agreed with the High Court’s earlier conclusion that she was “intentionally and illegally denied admission for 2020-21,” it did not support the High Court’s direction to “create” a seat for Ms. Koumundi this year. It has been repeatedly held by this court that directions cannot be issued for increasing annual intake capacity, Justice Rao observed.
