Verify NRI certificates of students who apply for med courses: HC

CHENNAI: In order to ensure the participation of genuine candidates in the counseling for the PG medical courses under the NRI quota, the Madras High Court ordered the State and election committee of Directorate Medical Education to verify the NRI veracity certificates furnished by the students.

Justice R Suresh Kumar passed the direction when the DME informed the court that only seven NRI certificates submitted by the PG medical aspirants were cross examined with the embassies which issued the certificate.

“From the next academic year, whoever makes application under NRI quota, at the time of scrutiny of the application, the first respondent shall take effort to get verification from the Indian Embassy concerned, who gave such certificates, as to the genuinety of those certificates and after getting the communication from the Embassy concerned, if any ingenuine certificates are found, the candidature of those applicants who filed the ingenuine NRI certificates can be rejected, ” the Justice R Suresh Kumar held.

The judge also wanted the state to ensure that along with the submission of online application, the candidates shall upload the necessary documents given in the annexure.

“This kind of verification exercise shall be undertaken uniformly in respect of all the applicants who made such applications which are otherwise in order, ” the court noted.

The judge passed the direction on hearing the petitions filed by seven NRI students who applied for PG medical courses in private medical colleges. The petitioners challenged the decision of the DME rejecting their applications on the grounds of submitting the bogus applications, obtaining low marks and others.

Recording the submissions, the judges noted that two out of the seven petitioners got seats under the All India Quota, one is ineligible to attend the counseling due to the lack of percentile and two others who submitted bogus NRI certificate should not be allowed for the counseling. Meanwhile, the court permitted the DME to conduct the counseling by permitting two other genuine NRI candidates.