Suspecting a scam in the filling of postgraduate medical seats without conducting NEET counselling in Tamil Nadu, the Madras High Court is considering ordering a CBI (Central Bureau of Investigation) inquiry. A bench comprising Chief Justice Munishwar Nath Bhandari and Justice D Bharatha Chakravarthy on Monday, April 19, raised this question while it was hearing a writ appeal filed by Dr G Selvarajan, former secretary of the Selection Committee, Directorate of Medical Education (DME). The scam was allegedly perpetrated by private medical colleges who were hand-in-hand with officials, who purportedly worked to fill PG medical seats without going through NEET counselling.
Dr Selvarajan’s writ appeal sought to quash a single judge bench order, where the court had found him and others guilty of malpractice while filling 90 out of 113 management quota PG medical seats in 13 private colleges in Tamil Nadu. According to this order issued on February 22, 2022, Dr Selvarajan and others had filled the vacancies for 2020-2021 without conducting mop-up counselling based on the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET) — which is mandated by the Medical Council of India and the Supreme Court.
On Monday, the court asked the parties who filed the petition to seek instructions as to why the matter should not be sent for CBI probe. The bench then posted the same matter to April 21. The bench also asked the Tamil Nadu government whether it had followed the February 22 court order, which had given the latter two months to initiate certain actions against the respondents.
In February, a single judge bench of the Madras High Court had ordered a CB-CID probe into the PG medical admissions scam. The matter was taken up after three students — M Keethanjali, MS Santhosh and Santhosh Kumar, who had qualified the NEET examinations — moved the Madras High Court. The students’ petitions asked the Director General of Health Services, Director of the Directorate of Medical Education and Secretary of the selection committee to hold mop-up counselling for the management seats, and fill in the PG seats which were lying vacant as per the seat matrix.
While hearing their petitions, the single judge bench observed that “not conducting mop-up counselling is an attempt to dilute the mandate and that the infraction conducted by the parties not only borders on contempt but also attempts to play with the lives and livelihoods of the younger generation.”
The parties mentioned in the petition include officials of the DME and the Health Department, Dr Selvarajan (now retired), and private colleges including PSG Institute of Medical Science and Research, Coimbatore and Karpaga Vinayakka Medical College, Chengalapattu.
The respondents, however, argued that there was no illegality, and that mop-up counselling was not done even for the government seats, due to shortage of time considering the unprecedented COVID-19 situation in 2020-2021.
The single judge bench ordered a CB-CID inquiry, asked the Tamil Nadu government to freeze the pension benefits of Dr Selvarajan within the next two months, register an FIR against the middlemen, the private colleges, the DME and Health Department officials and also offer a compensation of Rs 4 lakh each to two aggrieved candidates who had approached the court.
On Monday, the bench also asked the government pleader to clarify the circumstances under which the state government issued an order ratifying the period of two months, when Dr Selvarajan’s services were not extended.