HC summons top DME officials for misinterpreting its order

Bhopal/Jabalpur: A division bench of the MP high court has summoned the principal secretary and director of medical education in the court on Saturday for “misquoting and misapplying its order dated April 30, 2019”.

The court had asked the DME to maintain a status quo with regard to the NRI quota for admissions. But the DME, on its own, suspended the entire counselling process, which was underway then for admission into PG courses in medical & dental colleges. It was scheduled to end on May 2.

According to new rules framed by the department of medical education, 15 per cent seats under the NRI quota would be converted into general pool seats if NRI students were not available or not forthcoming to take admission under the NRI quota.

Hearing a petition filed by Association of Private Medical Colleges, Madhya Pradesh, challenging the state government's proposed action to convert the 15 per cent NRI quota into general category quota, a division bench of Justice R S Jha and Justice Sanjay Dwivedi expressed extreme displeasure over “misinterpretation” of its earlier order and summoned the two top officials of the medical education department of the state for personal appearance in the court.

The Association of Medical Colleges was represented by advocates Siddharth Radhelal Gupta and Shubham Shrivastava before the high court, while the state government was represented by deputy advocate general Praveen Dubey and Himanshu Mishra and Medical Council of India (MCI) through Anoop Nair.