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Riya George v. Kannur Medical College and Ors.

Writ Petition (Civil) · 2019 INSC 252Decided 21 Feb 2019
Writ Petition (Civil) No. 1247 of 2018
Dr. Justice D.Y. Chandrachud · Justice Hemant Gupta

Background

The petitioner was admitted to the MBBS program at Kannur Medical College in 2016, paying over Rs 21 lakhs in fees, but the college's admissions (including hers) were repeatedly cancelled by Kerala's admission authorities for the college's non-compliance with centralised-counselling and NEET-related directions, a cancellation ultimately upheld through multiple rounds of litigation. Having lost an academic year, she secured admission elsewhere via NEET 2017 and sought a refund; her father, under financial pressure, executed documents unconditionally withdrawing an earlier complaint in exchange for a partial refund. She then filed this writ petition directly in the Supreme Court under Article 32 seeking compensation for the lost academic year, without disclosing the earlier withdrawal of her complaint in her petition.

Decision Breakdown

The Supreme Court found the petitioner's non-disclosure of the withdrawal of her earlier complaint to be a serious lapse in the duty of full and candid disclosure ordinarily required in Article 32 proceedings, which would normally warrant dismissal. However, the Court declined to dismiss the petition, reasoning that justice should not be sacrificed to procedural rigor, especially given that a coordinate bench had already (in an August 2018 consent order affecting the same batch of 150 affected students) directed the college to pay double the fees to each affected student, with exact quantification left to the Admission and Fee Regulatory Committee. Rather than itself quantifying damages, which could conflict with that pending Committee process, the Court held the petitioner was entitled to benefit from that same principle and disposed of her writ petition by directing the Committee to decide her claim within three months, keeping all rights and contentions open.

Lesson Learnt

Litigants approaching the Supreme Court under Article 32 must make full and honest disclosure of all relevant facts, including prior settlements or withdrawn claims, concealment can be fatal to a petition, but courts may still grant practical relief (here, a specific timeline for an existing regulatory process to decide the claim) where dismissing outright would cause real hardship to someone who already suffered a genuine wrong.

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

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