Country facing shortage of specialist doctors but seats in super-specialty medical courses remain vacant; solution needed: Supreme Court

The Supreme Court recently bemoaned the failure to ensure that post-graduate medical seats in the country are filled up [Kevin Joy vs Government of Kerala and ors]..A bench of Justices BR Gavai and Aravind Kumar in its order indicated that the same was not ideal for a country grappling with shortage of super-specialty doctors."The present petition depicts a very sorry picture that 1,003 precious super specialty seats are going to waste, inasmuch as nobody could be admitted on the said seats. On the one hand, we find that there is always a shortage of Super Specialty Doctors and on the other hand these precious seats remain unfilled," the Court noted in its order dated April 13. It asked Additional Solicitor General of India (ASG) Aishwarya Bhati to 'impress upon the concerned authorities' to find a solution..The observations came in a plea where the petitioner-students had been permitted to resign from their initially allotted seats, which had subsequently been filled up.They moved the top court to have their original documents returned along with a refund of fees. The Court allowed the former while it deferred its decision on the latter..ASG Bhati, responding to the bench, submitted that the Union government has proposed to appoint a committee led by the Director General of Health Services, and also consisting of representatives of State and private medical colleges. The bench noted that the process of admissions for the next academic session would begin in July 2023. It, thus, asked the ASG to ensure that the committee comes up with a solution to the issue before that. The matter will be heard next on July 4, 2023. The Union government was directed to file a status report by then. In a separate petition filed by Jaslok Hospital and Research Centre, Mumbai praying for a special mop up round of counselling to fill up two nephrology seats, the Court after hearing the arguments, directed the Medical Counselling Committee (MCC) to fill up these 2 vacancies as a special case from the existing waiting list of candidates. The Court further directed that if required a special stray mop up may also be conducted for these 2 seats as a special case. The court passed the said order after hearing the counsel appearing for the hospital who argued that despite the college's intimation to the MCC prior to the mop up round the MCC didn't include the seats and the resultant vacant would cause strain on the hospital's nephrology department. .Senior Advocate Devadatt Kamat and advocates Lzafeer Ahmad BF, Vishnu Sharma AS, Purvi Mathur, Kushagra Sharma, Javedur Rahman, Mudassir, Purvi Mathur, Kushagra Sharma and Rashmi Nandakumar appeared for the petitioners. [Read order]