The Supreme Court on Wednesday reserved its order on a batch of petitions by the Tamil Nadu Medical Officers Associations and others seeking direction to provide quota for in-service doctors for admission to post-graduate degree courses.
A five-judge constitution bench headed by Chief Justice Dipak Misra reserved the order as Tamil Nadu doctors challenged a 2008 Medical Council of India (MCI) regulation under which a doctor would get 10 marks for each year of service in rural and hilly areas to the maximum of 30 marks.
The petitioners argued that if there was no reservation for in-house doctors and only weightage of marks was the sole consideration for admission to post-graduate courses, then all seats under the state quota of 50 per cent would be cornered by the doctors serving in rural and hilly areas.
This, the petitioners contended, would be a disadvantage to the doctors serving in the cities.
However, the MCI opposed the plea, saying it would result in dilution of standards and merit for the admissions.
After the top court in the academic year 2016-17 held that admissions to under-graduate and post-graduate medical courses would be on the basis of marks obtained in NEET examination, 50 per cent of the seats were reserved for all India quota and 50 per cent went to the states.
Many states including Tamil Nadu, Kerala, West Bengal and Odisha were providing exclusive quota to government doctors for admission to post-graduate courses.