Abdul Ahad & Ors. v. Union of India
Background
The review petitioners were students admitted to the MBBS course at Glocal Medical College, Uttar Pradesh, in 2016 through the college's own private counselling, conducted in defiance of a State Government notification mandating centralized counselling for all institutions. The Medical Council of India later discharged them from the course because their admission was outside the centralized process. After their earlier challenges failed, they sought review of the Supreme Court's own 2020 order that had dismissed the original writ petitioners' case and their intervention application.
Decision Breakdown
The Court held that the Uttar Pradesh government's centralized counselling notification was statutory and binding, and had already been upheld by the Allahabad High Court; the private counselling conducted by Glocal Medical College was therefore per se illegal. Despite sympathy for the students, the Court relied on a long line of precedent holding that courts cannot protect admissions obtained through illegal "backdoor" processes merely because students later completed parts of the course. It found the review petitioners could not reasonably claim ignorance of the discharge order and held the Review Petitions devoid of merit.
Lesson Learnt
Admission to a professional course obtained outside a legally mandated centralized admission process is void regardless of how much of the course a student has since completed: courts will not use sympathy to override a clear statutory admission procedure.