HC upholds CB-CID probe into PG medical admission in pvt colleges

CHENNAI: The first bench of Madras High Court on Monday upheld an order of a single judge directing the CB-CID to probe the alleged irregularities in filling 74 management quota PG medical seats without counselling in 2020-21 academic year.

The first bench of Chief Justice Munishwar Nath Bhandari and Justice N Mala rejected the writ appeal filed by Dr G Selvarajan, former secretary to the Selection Committee of the Directorate of Medical Education (DME), who had challenged the order of Justice N Anand Venkatesh directing the Chief Secretary to hold his pension benefits and also asked the DGP to transfer the case to CB-CID to find the DME officials involved in the illegal admission proceedings.

Justice Anand Venkatesh passed the orders in October 2020 and January 2021 after hearing the petitions filed by Dr MS Santhosh and Dr M Keethanjali.

Chief Justice Bhandari held that the court could not accept Dr Selvarajan’s submissions that he asked private colleges to fill stray seats without conducting any counselling due to paucity of time.

“While four rounds of mop-up counselling were conducted for government quota seats, why did the DME Selection Committee allow only two rounds of mop-up counselling for private colleges? The last round of counselling for management quota was held on July 31, 2020. However, as per the direction of the apex court, the last date for completing the counselling was August 8, 2020. Why should the appellant ask the colleges to fill the seats with unmeritorious candidates while there was one-month time available for conducting the counselling,” the CJ asked in the order. The court also rejected his contentions that he had asked private colleges to fill the seats on their own as he had to conduct counselling for government quota seats.

Noting that initially two rounds of counselling were held simultaneously to fill management seats, the bench questioned why it was not done in the case of management quota seats.

The bench confirmed the single judge’s directions except holding the appellant’s pension benefits, noting that it could not be done now as the inquiry has not been completed.