Pallavi vs Union of India & Ors.
Background
The petitioner, a U.S. national and Overseas Citizen of India (OCI) cardholder since 2015, appeared for the NEET-PG/INI-CET 2023 medical postgraduate entrance exam as an OCI candidate, scored a good rank, and was even provisionally allotted a Pediatrics seat at AIIMS in a mock counselling round. Just before the first real counselling round, AIIMS abruptly reclassified her as an "Indian National" instead of a foreign/OCI candidate, citing a March 2021 Home Ministry notification that bars OCI cardholders from competing for seats reserved exclusively for Indian citizens, forcing her to participate under protest in a category that drastically reduced her admission chances.
Decision Breakdown
The Supreme Court relied on its own earlier ruling in Anushka Rengunthwar v. Union of India (2023), which had held that the 2021 notification, although worded to apply only prospectively, was in substance "retroactive" and thus arbitrary because it stripped away rights already relied upon by OCI cardholders who had built their education and career plans around the earlier (2005/2007/2009) notifications granting them parity with Indian nationals for entrance exams. Applying that precedent, since the petitioner had obtained her OCI card back in 2015, well before the 2021 notification, she remained entitled to the earlier, more favourable treatment, and AIIMS's last-minute reclassification of her as an Indian National had no legal basis. The Court allowed the writ petition, directing AIIMS and participating institutions to consider her (and similarly placed OCI cardholders who obtained their cards before 04.03.2021) for any postgraduate medical seats still unfilled at the date of the judgment, based on her NEET performance and rank.
Lesson Learnt
When the government confers a right or benefit that people have reasonably relied upon to plan their education or career, it cannot retroactively withdraw that benefit at the last minute without a reasoned, non-arbitrary process, and once the Supreme Court has settled how a particular notification applies (here, only prospectively to persons acquiring OCI status after the notification date), authorities implementing it, like AIIMS, must follow that ruling rather than applying the notification more broadly on their own.