Summary
Two medical colleges lost one MBBS seat each for 2023-24 because the High Court's cryptic interim orders directed a seat to be kept vacant and the writ petitions were decided only after the admission deadline. The Supreme Court refused a compensatory extra seat in a later year, laid down that seats should be kept vacant only in cast-iron cases and with security where appropriate, and, applying restitution, allowed the colleges to have the fee deficit factored into future fee fixation.
Issues
- Whether colleges whose seat went unfilled because of an interim order to keep it vacant are entitled to a direction to create a compensatory seat in the next academic year.
- What principles govern interim orders directing medical seats to be kept vacant pending a student's writ petition.
- How the loss caused to a college by an interim order that later proves unsustainable should be neutralised.
Held
- The interim orders directing one seat to be kept vacant were cryptic: a court granting interim relief must at least briefly record its prima facie assessment and its view on balance of convenience and irreparable harm, which the High Court wholly ignored. (¶ 20)
- A medical seat has life only in its own year and until the cut-off date; a vacant seat cannot be carried forward or created in a later year. The limited power recognised in S. Krishna Sradha to increase seats or mould relief for a wronged meritorious candidate is vastly different from creating an additional seat at the instance of a college. (¶¶ 21, 22, 31)
- Since provisional admissions are not to be granted casually, the same standard applies to orders keeping seats vacant: they should be made only where the petitioner has a cast-iron case bound to succeed because the authorities' error is gross, and with great caution and circumspection. (¶¶ 23, 24, 25)
- Even where that exceptional threshold is met, the court may in appropriate cases require the petitioner to furnish security to the college that would bear the loss of the vacant seat, so that the loss is made good if the petition fails and the seat remains unfilled; and the court must endeavour to decide the matter before counselling ends. (¶¶ 25, 26)
- Restitution applies to interim orders: courts should neutralise the effect of wrong interim orders they were persuaded to pass, and under the maxim actus curiae neminem gravabit the party prejudiced may be compensated. (¶¶ 27, 28, 29)
- As the colleges were prejudiced for no fault of their own and will lose fees for the whole course while expenditure stays the same, but an additional seat cannot be ordered, the appropriate remedy was to let them seek recovery of the fee deficit through the State's fee fixation process for future batches. (¶¶ 30, 31, 32)
Result
Appeals partly allowed; the appellant colleges are at liberty to represent to the State Fee Fixation Committee/Authority, which shall, while fixing fees for future batches, reckon the fee deficit caused by the single vacant seat and add it to the fee; no order as to costs.