The Uttarakhand High Court on Wednesday directed the dean of academics at AIIMS, Rishikesh to reconsider an appeal by Laxman Singh Brijwal, who has alleged that the institute did not offer him admission to a post-graduate diploma course in respiratory medicine, despite there being 5 seats available and only 4 were filled. Brijwal was among the 13 short-listed candidates.
The appeal of the petitioner will be treated as a representation on merits, the court said and asked that there should be a speaking order in accordance with law within two weeks.
Brijwal has challenged the dean’s order of April 17, which rejected the representation of the candidate, made pursuant to the order of the high court passed in an earlier petition.
Brijwal alleged that he had applied for admission to the PG diploma course after a notification issued by AIIMS in August 2020. The selection for admission to the course was to be made through a competitive examination. Brijwal participated in the competitive examination and ended up as one of the 13 candidates who were short-listed for an interview. Brijwal faced the interview, but he was not given admission.
He said that since there were 5 seats available in the said course, but only 4 seats were filled and since petitioner was the fifth in order of merit, therefore he filed the writ petition before the high court.
On April 1, 2021, the petition was disposed of, with liberty given to Brijwal to make a representation. The competent authority in AIIMS, Rishikesh was also directed to take a decision thereupon within a period of two weeks. Brijwal did make the representation, but the dean rejected that on April 17. Brijwal, thus, again approached the high court.
Justice Manoj Kumar Tewari observed that in the impugned order passed by the dean, it is admitted that there were 5 seats available in the said course, and that 13 candidates were called for an interview, based on their performance in the written examination.
The Court further observed that of the 13 short-listed candidates, only 12 appeared for interview and of those 12, 4 were given admission. Thus, it is an admitted position that 1 seat is still lying vacant in the aforesaid course.
“The only reason assigned for not granting admission to the petitioner is that he has scored only 17.47 percentile in the selection process. The impugned order, however, is silent as to whether there was any condition regarding cut-off marks stipulated before commencement of selection process,” held the high court.
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Therefore, on the basis of above observation, the Court ordered: “In the absence of such requirement, admission could not have been denied to the petitioner. He stands fifth in order of merit against 5 seats. Since this aspect has been overlooked in the impugned order, therefore, the impugned order dated 17.04.2021 is liable to be set aside and the same is hereby set-aside. The Dean (Academics), AIIMS, Rishikesh, is directed to reconsider Petitioner’s representation on merits and pass a speaking order in accordance with law within two weeks from today. ”
Source: ILNS