CALCUTTA, 15 December 2004 — The West Bengal government started expelling yesterday Non-Resident Indian (NRI) students from two state-run medical colleges in accordance with the Supreme Court orders.

The mass dismissal of as many as 74 NRI students who paid a whopping one million rupees each for admission into medical colleges brings down the curtains on the high-profile capitation fee scandal rocking the Left Front-ruled state for months.

Administering a bitter pill, Supreme Court’s Justices Y. K. Sabharwal and P. P. Naolekar yesterday directed the state government to expel 74 NRI students from the MBBS course by Dec. 18 and file a compliance report by Dec. 20.

Health Minister Surya Kant Mishra described the apex court’s verdict as “unfortunate” but vowed to implement it immediately. Chief Minister Buddhadev Bhattacharya — who had publicly announced that “NRI students will complete their course come what may” — evaded reporters after the judgment.

A pall of gloom descended on the NRI medical students’ hostel in central Calcutta as authorities grudgingly started canceling their admission as per the court’s hard-hitting order.

“It’s the end of the road for us. And the government is responsible for the terrible mess. Why did it admit us in the first place”, asked Biswanath Ghosh Dastidar, an NRI student from Britain whose parents paid a hefty capitation fee for the MBBS course.

The vacancies will be filled by students from the merit list of the 2003 Joint Entrance Examination results who led the campaign against the communist government’s controversial cash-for-medical seats scheme.

The division bench scolded Chief Secretary Ashok Gupta, Health Secretary Kalyan Bagchi, Director of Medical Education C. R. Maiti and Medical Selection Committee Chairperson Jayshree Mitra in the packed courtroom for defying its earlier order.

Last month, the apex court ordered the government to immediately reduce NRI quota in Calcutta’s S.S.K.M. Medical College and Hospital and the Midnapore Medical College and Hospital from 50 percent to 15 percent of the total available seats.

But the state government dragged its feet attracting a contempt notice to Ashok who was summoned to appear before the division bench with senior officials.

Coming down heavily on them, the judges angrily asked their counsel Dipankar Gupta to explain why the “state government had behaved in such an irresponsible manner”.

The judges rejected the government contention that no student can be admitted after the cut-off date of Sept. 30 fixed by the Medical Council of India. “The cut-off date is not applicable to any matter that is sub-judice”, the court retorted.

On Monday night itself — within hours of the judgment — the government asked the two medical colleges to start implementing the court’s order from Tuesday.

The brazen scheme was notified by the state government in the official gazette on July 19, 2003. Under it, 104 NRI students were admitted to the two medical colleges which have 200 seats altogether triggering a massive controversy.

The capitation case landed in the apex court in October when the state government challenged a judgment of the Calcutta High Court scrapping the NRI quota altogether.

The Supreme Court slashed the NRI quota from 50 percent to 15 percent of the 200 seats in the two medical colleges where the cash-for-seats scheme was implemented.

But instead of complying with the order, the Marxist CM promised to find a “satisfactory” solution triggering a contempt case.

The state government argued in the High Court and Supreme Court that it decided to charge NRI students one million rupees per seat to raise funds for medical education. But the argument did not silence those felt that Marxists were making medical profession the preserve of the wealthy.

In October, Calcutta High Court branded the capitation fee scheme as downright illegal, mala fide and discriminatory upsetting the government’s apple-cart.

The ill-conceived plan ran into rough weather when a group of 16 boys and girls — who cleared the Joint Entrance Examination (JEE) but were denied admission in medical colleges — filed a petition in the High Court against NRI quota sounding its death knell.