Lucknow:
The Lucknow bench of the Allahabad high court has ordered the management of a private medical college in the city to pay Rs 25 lakh damage per student for "wrongly admitting" 150 of them in the MBBS 2015-16 course.
The court directed the management of the college to deposit the entire amount in respect of all the 150 students with the director general of medical education, Uttar Pradesh within two months.
The director general, in turn, shall distribute the money among the students after due verification.
The court though refused to grant relief as sought by the petitioner students and dismissed all the writ petitions filed by them in the matter.
The petitioners had sought a direction to allow them to appear in the first year MBBS examination for 2015-16. The judgment was delivered by justice Devendra Kumar Arora on six writ petitions moved by some students.
State counsel Sanjay Bhasin said the college had no affiliation or recognition of Medical Council of India (MCI) and 150 students were wrongly admitted without proper counselling, in a process which was "neither transparent nor fair".
"This court is constrained to observe that there has been a wilful disobedience by the respondent medical college of the orders passed by the apex court, which is nothing but an interference with the administration of justice. Disobedience of an order of a court, which is wilful, shakes the very foundation of the judicial system and can erode the faith and confidence reposed by the people in the judiciary, and undermines the rule of law," the court said.
The court further observed that the medical college had shown "scant respect" to the order passed by the highest court of the country and proceeded, under haste, to impart medical education to the petitioners in the first year MBBS course, possibly to make an "unlawful gain, adopting unhealthy practices".
