Education Promotion Society for India & Anr. v. Union of India & Others
Background
A society representing medical colleges and deemed universities running postgraduate medical courses asked the Supreme Court to extend the counselling deadline for filling vacant PG medical seats, arguing that over 1,000 seats nationwide were lying unfilled and that colleges had invested heavily in infrastructure. The Union of India opposed the plea, pointing to a fixed, court-approved admission schedule that had been laid down in earlier cases to stop malpractice in medical admissions.
Decision Breakdown
The Court found that, except for one narrow earlier order limited to a specific academic year's super-speciality seats, all the past extension orders the petitioners relied on were college- or state-specific and expressly stated they were not to be treated as precedent. It noted that of the roughly 603 vacant deemed-university seats, 95% were in non-clinical subjects, which routinely go unfilled because graduate doctors prefer clinical specialities, not because of any systemic unfairness. The Court held that merely having vacant seats is not, by itself, a reason to break the fixed admission schedule, since doing so would "open a Pandora's box" and defeat the entire purpose of having a strict timetable. The petition was accordingly dismissed.
Lesson Learnt
Courts will not casually override a carefully designed, uniformly applicable schedule (here, the medical admission timetable) just because following it causes some inconvenience or wastage: exceptions granted in other cases for special, one-off reasons do not become a general rule.