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State of Haryana & Anr. Etc. v. Dr. Narender Soni & Ors. Etc.

Civil Appeal · 2017 INSC 469Decided 25 May 2017
Civil Appeal Nos. 8179-8181 of 2017
Justice L. Nageswara Rao · Justice Navin Sinha

Background

Just days before NEET postgraduate medical counselling in May 2017, the State of Haryana issued a notification identifying 115 Community Health Centres and 498 Primary Health Centres as "remote and/or difficult areas," entitling doctors who had served there to extra weightage in PG admissions. Several affected doctors challenged the notification as arbitrary and rushed; the Punjab and Haryana High Court agreed, struck it down, and ordered fresh counselling. The State and some beneficiary doctors appealed to the Supreme Court.

Decision Breakdown

The Supreme Court upheld the High Court's view that the notification was the product of a hasty, flawed process: a committee was formed only after the High Court's earlier intervention, produced its report in a single day, and the notification was implemented in the first counselling round even before it was officially published in the Gazette. The criteria used (chiefly, doctors' personal unwillingness to serve in a location) were held to be an improper basis for identifying genuinely remote/difficult areas, reversing the proper analytical sequence and resulting in an implausibly high 60% of health centres being labelled "difficult" in a relatively developed state. The appeals were dismissed, the State was directed to issue a fresh, properly-reasoned notification within one week using objective criteria, and the admission deadline was extended to 10 June 2017; the Court also flagged the State's conduct in holding counselling in defiance of an interim order as a possible contempt matter.

Lesson Learnt

A government policy that confers a benefit (like admission weightage) must be based on objective, carefully-considered criteria genuinely linked to its stated purpose: courts will strike down a policy, however well-intentioned, if it is shown to have been rushed through, or rigged backward from a desired outcome, rather than properly reasoned.

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

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