Maharashtra Medical College to Pay Rs 2.5 Cr Penalty for Enrolling Students Despite Stay Order: SC

The Supreme Court on Friday directed a medical college in Maharashtra to deposit Rs 2.5 crore as penalty on all India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) for “overstepping” its order and admitting 100 MBBS students despite the stay order.

The top court said that this amount, to be deposited in four weeks, would be used at the discretion of the AIIMS director for the treatment of poor patients.

In a hearing last year, the court compared the Annasaheb Chudaman Patil Memorial Medical College to the movie ‘Munna Bhai MBBS’ and said that a surprise inspection by a team of the National Medical Commission (NMC) had found that all ” Sluggish and fit” The kids were fine. Lying in the pediatric ward.

A bench of Chief Justice DY Chandrachud and Justices PS Narasimha and JB Pardiwala reminded that the NMC inspection team had found that the hospital’s logbook contained medical records including blood pressure of patients of a future date.

“The court has due regard to the situation of 100 students who are troubling for admission but at the same time, the sanctity of the orders of this court has to be maintained. The respondent (medical college) shall deposit Rs 2.5 crore with AIIMS and the receipt shall be given as evidence to (a) the petitioner, the National Medical Commission and the registry of this court, the bench said in its order.

It states, ‘This amount will be used by the AIIMS director at his discretion for the treatment of poor patients.’

The apex court warned the college not to recover the fine amount from the students.

Advocate Gaurav Sharma, appearing for NMC, submitted that the college has been permitted for 100 MBBS seats for the academic year 2022-23 after the inspection team found that it has removed its deficiencies. However, in 2021-22, when the college was directed by this court not to admit students, the institute continued with the process.

Senior advocate Nidesh Gupta, appearing for the medical college, said that admissions for 2021-22 were done by March and this court had passed a stay order on 8 April.

The bench said that then the college should have brought this fact to the notice of this court by making an application.

“This appears to be a clear violation of our orders and hence the college needs to be fined. We will not obstruct the admission of students as it affects their education.

The apex court had on April 8 last year taken serious note of the NMC inspection report and stayed the admission of 100 MBBS students till further orders.

The top court had directed the NMC to conduct a re-inspection of the college by professor rank officers within two months to see whether it complied with the norms.

It had said that in view of the deficiencies found during the inspection conducted on January 14 and 15, 2022, the college has been directed to stop the admission with immediate effect.

The Annasaheb Chudaman Patil Memorial Medical College, located in Maharashtra’s Dhule district, had earlier said that the inspection was done on the day of ‘Makar Sankranti’ and the officials who came to inspect were not from a random pool of NMC.

The apex court had then said, “Just understand where medical education is going. You had healthy children in the pediatric ward who were brought in without any illness and by evening they all went home. On January 14, the nurses had records from January 16 onwards of the patients’ blood pressure and other blood parameters. This is completely doctored data which was prepared by the college.” It had noted that there were so called patients who had registration numbers like 11111 and 66666 and all the patients were healthy.

The NMC had told the top court that the permission for admission of additional students was canceled as the college had no operation theater or X-ray machine and other deficiencies.

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(This story has not been edited by News18 staff and is published from a syndicated news agency feed)