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Nilay Gupta v. Chairman NEET PG Medical and Dental Admission/Counselling Board 2020

Civil Appeal · 2020 INSC 584Decided 9 Oct 2020
Civil Appeal No. 3345 of 2020
Justice L. Nageswara Rao · Justice S. Ravindra Bhat

Background

Two NEET-PG candidates had applied for postgraduate medical/dental seats in Rajasthan under the "NRI quota," a reserved category private colleges can offer. A private college and the state counselling board later dropped the NRI quota altogether and merged those seats into the general "management quota," after the candidates had already submitted their documents and committed to that path. A single judge of the Rajasthan High Court ordered the candidates be admitted under the NRI quota, but a Division Bench reversed this, holding that colleges are free to decide whether to offer an NRI quota at all. Several other students who had meanwhile received admissions (some as a result of the single judge's order, some after the Division Bench's reversal) also joined as parties.

Decision Breakdown

The Supreme Court agreed that private colleges are not legally bound to offer a fixed 15% NRI quota: that quota is a discretionary option, not a mandatory entitlement, under the Court's own precedent in P.A. Inamdar. It also held that the single judge had gone too far by directly ordering admission of specific candidates rather than merely requiring their cases be considered. However, the Court found it unfair that the college changed its policy at the very last moment, after NRI candidates had already submitted verification documents and committed to that quota in reliance on the published schedule. To balance these competing equities, the Court ordered a special, limited round of counselling confined only to the already-filled seats, to be conducted strictly on merit among genuine NRI applicants, with displaced candidates to be accommodated in other disciplines or refunded.

Lesson Learnt

Educational institutions have discretion over whether to offer category-based quotas like the NRI quota, but once students have relied on an announced admission process and taken concrete steps (like submitting documents) under it, a last-minute policy reversal that blindsides them can be struck down as unfair, even if the underlying policy change itself would otherwise have been lawful.

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

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