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Medical Council of India v. N.C. Medical College and Hospital

Civil Appeal · 2018 INSC 583Decided 4 Jul 2018
Civil Appeal No. 6001 of 2018
Justice Uday Umesh Lalit · Justice Deepak Gupta

Background

N.C. Medical College and Hospital, Panipat, repeatedly failed physical inspections by the Medical Council of India (MCI) over several years, with deficiencies in infrastructure, teaching faculty and clinical material persisting despite multiple opportunities to fix them; the college was even debarred for two academic years at one point. When MCI again recommended against renewing permission for the 2018-19 academic year after a fresh inspection found continuing deficiencies, the college challenged this before the Punjab and Haryana High Court, which granted an interim order allowing it to admit students for the year while the case was pending, subject to informing students of the litigation.

Decision Breakdown

The Supreme Court held that given the college's long history of repeated inspection failures and non-compliance, no permission to admit students should have been granted unless a fresh physical verification actually confirmed the deficiencies were cured, and merely warning students that their admission was subject to litigation was not sufficient protection, since colleges denied final permission after provisional admissions routinely leave students stranded with no other institution able to absorb them. Citing a consistent line of its own precedents (MCI v. Rajiv Gandhi University, MCI v. JSS Medical College, MCI v. KIMS, and Dental Council of India v. Dr. Hedgewar Smruti Rugna Seva Mandal), the Court reiterated that High Courts should not grant interim orders permitting admissions where approval has been refused, and that the correct course is an expedited final hearing. It therefore set aside the High Court's interim order of 29.05.2018 without ruling on the underlying factual dispute, which was left for the High Court to decide finally on merits.

Lesson Learnt

When an institution has a track record of failing compliance inspections, courts will be especially reluctant to let it admit students provisionally through an interim order pending final adjudication, because reversing such admissions later causes severe, often unfixable hardship to the students involved: a full and expedited hearing is the safer path.

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

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