HC adjourns docs8217; petitions

July 9: Four groups of petitioners from different parts of the state will have to wait till a later date to know if they can apply for post...

July 9: Four groups of petitioners from different parts of the state will have to wait till a later date to know if they can apply for post-graduation in medicine. Their petitions challenging compulsory rural service as a prerequisite for post-graduation studies were clubbed together by a division bench of the Bombay High Court today and the case was adjourned.

State Government counsel, Additional Advocate General B P Apte said Thursday8217;s deadline for the distribution of post-graduate admission forms at the Grant Medical College will be extended.

Prior to July 1997, MBBS students were eligible to seek admissions to post-graduate medical studies immediately after one year of rotating internship. The government is now implementing a resolution dated February 28, whereby a year of rural service will become compulsory for those seeking admission to a post-graduate course. Application forms for PG admissions are not being accepted without an experience certificate of government service. As a result, students who have completed their internship this year will be able to apply for PG courses only in 1998.

The first hearing of the two petitions filed by two groups of students from Mumbai took place today. The division bench of Justice A C Agarwal and S D Gundewar opined that it would be better to club these petitions with those filed by two groups of students from Pune, Solapur, Miraj and Kolhapur.The petitioners have claimed that the GR of February 28 contradicted the rules laid down by the Medical Council of India. 8220;It8217;s therefore violative of rights of equality guaranteed to petitioners as it imposes an additional burden on students seeking admission in Maharashtra.8221;

The GR said that compulsary rural service rule would be implemented from January 1997 when 70 per cent of the students in the batch finished their internship. These students were granted post-graduate admission without their having completed a compulsory one-year of government service. The petitioners, who belong to the July term of 1997 said that this amounts to penalising a small fraction of students of the same academic year and is thus discriminatory.

The petitioners also said the implementation of this rule would also result in the loss of seniority at national level for them if they decided to continue in government service.