CALCUTTA, 8 November 2004 — In a landmark verdict, the Supreme Court of India has ordered the West Bengal government to immediately reduce NRI quota in two medical colleges from 50 per cent to 15 percent of the total available seats.
A bench comprising Justice Y.K. Sabharwal and Justice Tarun Chatterjee delivered the interim order in an appeal filed by the West Bengal government challenging a judgment of the Calcutta High Court scrapping the NRI quota altogether.
The apex court observed that the appeal required “deeper examination” after hearing counsels for the state government, NRI students and meritorious students who were hit hard by the NRI quota.
The state government argued in the high court and Supreme Court that it decided to charge NRI students one million rupees per seat in Calcutta’s S.S.K.M. Medical College and Hospital and the Midnapore Medical College and Hospital, to raise funds for medical education. Under the cash-for-medical seats scheme, 104 NRI students were admitted in the two medical colleges which have 200 seats triggering a massive controversy in the Left Front-ruled province.
But last month Calcutta High Court branded the capitation fee scheme as downright illegal throwing a spanner in the government’s works. The controversial scheme was notified by the state government on July 19, 2003. And out of 1,300 applicants, 104 students were selected under the NRI quota. They paid 924,000 rupees each to become a doctor — one of the most lucrative and respectable professions in India.
But the plan ran into rough weather when a group of 16 boys and girls — who cleared the Joint Entrance Examination (JEE) but were denied admission to medical colleges — filed a petition in the high court against the NRI quota.
Last month, Justice Indira Banerjee scrapped the NRI quota, branding the 2003 notification “illegal, arbitrary, bad in law and ultra vires of the constitution” and revoked the admission of 104 NRI candidates.
Justice Banerjee also ordered the two medical colleges to admit a new set of students from the merit list of the 2003 JEE results which included the petitioners. Even at the height of controversy, the state government justified it on the grounds that medical courses had to be subsidized as it was becoming increasingly impossible to finance them. But there was great opposition to the seats-for-cash plan by parents of meritorious students who argued that medical education was being made the preserve of the wealthy.
