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Journalism of Courage
In a major relief to two medical students from Lokmanya Tilak Municipal Medical College, the Bombay High Court Friday directed the college to issue their degrees, which had been held back, within four weeks.
A division bench headed by Justice V M Kanade was hearing a petition filed by two students of the college — Felice Kutty, who had topped in MD in Pathology, and Pradeep Patil, who had done MS in Orthopedics. They had not been granted their degrees owing to some issues relating to their admission process, because of which their names were not registered with the Maharashtra university.
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While the college said that this happened inadvertently and was an oversight since the person in-charge of sending names was not well-versed with the online system, the court refused to accept this explanation. “The question to regularise these seats does not arise since the petitioners were entitled to the seats as a matter of right. Therefore, the question of seeking permission from the central government does not arise,” said Justice Kanade.
The court said this was a clear case of a mistake. “It is difficult to accept that such a mistake happened inadvertently. The petitioners were deprived of their results on completion of their course on the basis of the mistakes by the authorities,” said Justice Kanade, adding that the court did not want to pass any further orders in terms of investigation into whose fault it was.
The Judge, however, questioned, “How is it that the college gave them admission, issued them identity cards but forgot to give their names for registration?” Pulling up authorities such as the BJP-led central government, the Medical Council of India and the college, the high court said, “How can you play with the future of young students? They work hard to secure medical admissions. Imagine the agony they must have gone through.”
