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Dr. Saurabh Dwivedi & Ors. v. Union of India & Ors.

Civil Appeal · 2017 INSC 473Decided 7 Jun 2017
Civil Appeal No. 8268 of 2017
Justice Ashok Bhushan · Justice Deepak Gupta

Background

A single Allahabad High Court writ petition, originally filed only to decide whether in-service doctors of Uttar Pradesh's Provincial Medical Health Services (PMHS) who studied MBBS outside U.P. could still get admission "weightage" for having served in remote/difficult areas, ballooned into a much wider order. Without being asked to, the High Court also ruled that post-graduate medical seats in Aligarh Muslim University (AMU) and Banaras Hindu University (BHU) could only go to students who had done their MBBS within U.P., even though AMU and BHU were not parties to that case and were central universities with no state quota. Several affected students, in-service doctors, and the universities themselves appealed to the Supreme Court along with a related pending writ petition on NEET counselling timelines.

Decision Breakdown

The Supreme Court held the High Court had gone far beyond the scope of the case before it: AMU and BHU, being central universities with all-India merit-based admission, could not be forced to confine seats to U.P.-origin students, and the High Court's order upsetting institutional preference for these institutions (already settled by a Constitution Bench ruling allowing up to 50% institutional preference) was set aside. On the narrower question actually raised, the Court held that the "remote/difficult area" weightage under Regulation 9(iv) applies to all PMHS in-service doctors who served in such areas, regardless of where they got their MBBS degree: the State's own circulars drew no such distinction, and the High Court's contrary reading was "an artificial distinction." The High Court's order, issued just two days before the admission deadline, was quashed, admissions already granted were protected, and the deadline for filling remaining seats was extended to 12 June 2017.

Lesson Learnt

Courts are not free to decide issues that were never actually raised or argued by the parties before them, especially when the people or institutions directly affected (here, AMU and BHU) were never even made parties to the case. Litigants and institutions have a right to be heard before a court rules on something that affects them.

Official source (sci.gov.in)View Judgment (PDF)

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