The Director of Medical Education was directed by the High Court of Karnataka to transfer 99 MBBS first-year students from the GR Medical College and Hospital and Research Centre in Mangaluru to other private colleges in the state so that they could appear for the exams being held next month.
This is due to the Medical Assessment and Rating Board (MARB) of the National Medical Commission (NMC) filing a lawsuit after discovering that the college forged a letter requesting authorisation to continue the MBBS programme for the academic year 2022 - 2023 second batch, according to The New Indian Express.
A Division Bench of the Karnataka High Court comprising Justice G Narendar and Justice Vijaykumar A Patil passed the interim order after hearing a petition filed by Dhatri DS Avnvekar and 98 other students studying in the college. The bench said that this interim order is subject to the final orders on the writ petitions filed by the college.
The Bench mandated that the student redistribution exercise be finished by October 3. The applicants' admission to the college – which at the time had not been given permission to move further with admissions – was, according to the court, clearly a grave mistake.
The Advocate General argued that because the petitioners were accepted into a private college and because there were differences in the fee structures between government and private colleges, they needed to be accommodated in line with the admissions quota they were given and that too in private institutions. Therefore, he said, it would take some time for the authorities to transfer the students to 24 private colleges and file an affidavit.
NMC’s counsel submitted that NMC has already communicated the matter to the Karnataka State Government, allowing the transfer of the students.
The court then ordered the legal counsel for the Rajiv Gandhi University of Health Sciences to write an affidavit outlining every step that the university will take following the re-distribution of students and the timeline for completing those steps.
The Central Government's legal representative said that the college's appeal was rejected because it was submitted after the deadline.
The court then stated that the aforementioned components of the college's permission and right of admission would be investigated independently.
A message from the institution dated September 13, 2023, claimed that the NMC had authorised the admission of one batch of students in lieu of the UG course's annual intake of 150 students.
