SC orders Lucknow medical college to pay Rs 10 lakh each to 150 students who were illegally admitted

The Supreme Court on Thursday directed a medical college in Lucknow to grant compensation of Rs 10 lakh each to the 150 students it had admitted in the MBBS course without formal permission from the government.

The court also told the college to refund the students’ fees and pay a fine of Rs 25 lakh to the Supreme Court registry, and barred it from admitting students for the 2018-’19 academic year.

The college, run by the GRCG Memorial Trust, was one of the 32 institutions that the Medical Council of India had barred from admitting medical students till 2019 because of substandard facilities and not fulfilling other criteria.

The college had moved the Allahabad High Court against the medical council’s order. In September, the High Court had allowed the college to admit the 150 students despite the medical council concluding that it had indulged in “unethical and callous” practices.

A Supreme Court bench of Chief Justice Dipak Misra, and Justices A M Khanwilkar and D Y Chandrachud rebuked the High Court and said this was a case of “judicial indiscipline and impropriety”.

“It is most unfortunate, which may cause [an] institutional problem,” the bench said. The lawyers appearing for the medical council said that the High Court failed to consider that the college had poor infrastructure, clinical material and faculty.

The top court also reprimanded the GCRG Medical Trust, and said that it had jeopardised students’ careers by illegally admitting them. The college must compensate them for “playing with their careers” and “polluting young minds”, the court said.