The Supreme Court has decided not to issue an interim order on the case filed by Riya Shah and the medical students at Janaki Medical College (JMC), Birgunj, who have been deprived of appearing in the first year’s MBBS finals that started from December 20.

A joint bench of Justice Deepak Raj Joshi and Justice Anil Kumar Sinha announced their decision on Thursday.

The Institute of Medicine (IOM) had barred 34 JMC students, all of them from India, from sitting for their first year’s finals after finding that they had been admitted to the college without appearing in the entrance test.

After the IOM denied to accept the exam forms of these students, the JMC had filed a case at the Patan High Court on February 11, appealing that the students be allowed to appear in the exams.

The High Court had quashed the appeal on December 5. After that, the concerned students had filed a case at the apex court on December 16.

Previously on November 19, the Birgunj bench of Janakpur High Court had granted permission to 40 foreign students of National Medical College (NMC) to appear in the MBBS exams, even though they had not passed the IOM entrance.

“We don’t have the provision of allowing students to appear in the exam if they had not passed the compulsory entrance examination,” IOM Dean Dr Jagdish Prasad Agrawal said.

“In case of National Medical College, we only followed the court’s order. Regarding the JMC, the case is still sub judice and in such circumstance we cannot do anything.”

Anti-corruption crusader Dr Govinda KC has been issuing warning against allowing such students to sit the medical exams.

He has also demanded the IoM to allocate no further seats to the JMC from the next session.

The IoM had reduced the MBBS seats for the college to 50 this session. Earlier, the college was allotted 80 seats.