The Supreme Court on Thursday denied an interim order on a petition lodged by ‘non-meritorious’ students who had claimed their admission in MD/MS programmes to be legal and that implementing the merit-based admission would be unfair to them. 

The denial of apex court to issue the interim order has opened the doors for meritorious students to get enrolled in Bhairahawa-based Universal College of Medical Sciences and National Medical College in Birgunj.  

A division bench of Justices Saradha Prasad Ghimire and Bishwomber Prasad Shrestha denied an extension to the temporary interim order issued by Justice Purusottam Bhandari on June 24.

Fifty-three students—20 of National and the rest from Universal—had filed a petition at the SC after the Institute of Medicine (IoM) directed the medical colleges to enrol students on the merit list. Months before the IoM direction, the medical colleges had been arbitrarily enrolling the students charging exorbitant fees. The IoM then wrote to the colleges, warning that it would not recognise any students other than those from the merit list. 

The students who had enrolled into the two colleges paying higher fees then moved the court, challenging the IoM directives. 

After the interim order by Justice Bhandari, the owners of National and Universal had argued that they could not enrol meritorious students as the case was subjudice at the apex court.

The issue over the admission process for the PG programmes surfaced after Universal and National enrolled students with low marks in entrance examination despite the IoM warning that admission should be purely based on merit. However, the IoM published a new list of meritorious students, directing the medical colleges to enrol them. 

The SC decision also supports the initiative of IoM that had been struggling to implement its decision to admit the meritorious students for the post-graduate programmes. Following a widespread criticism, National eventually agreed to admit students, but Universal is still denying to take in meritorious students. Although the TU had set

Rs3.1 million fees for all the MD/MS courses, Universal has been demanding an additional amount, ranging between Rs1.6 million to Rs1.8 million, from the students.

The Nepal Medical Council has allocated Universal 37 seats and while 29 seats for National for admission in various post-graduate courses this session. 

Earlier, a single bench of then Acting Chief Justice Gopal Prasad Parajuli had ordered the colleges to admit students who are on the merit list and strictly follow the merit-based admission process.