The Karnataka High Court granted relief to 447 MBBS graduates challenging a rule mandating compulsory rural service and execution of bonds to that effect.
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Bengaluru: The Karnataka High Court granted relief to 447 MBBS graduates who challenged a rule mandating compulsory rural service and the execution of bonds to that effect.
The Court noted that the rule in question was published in the official gazette ten years after it had been promulgated.
“The said amended Rule is to come into effect on the date of publication in the Official Gazette. It is gazetted on 22-07-2022 – 10 years after the promulgation of the Rules. The State appears to have been in deep slumber or having a siesta for 10 years,”
-the judgment dated April 22 stated.
Justice M. Nagaprasanna, however, clarified that MBBS students admitted to colleges under the government quota after July 22, 2022, could not escape compulsory rural service or the execution of bonds.
“When the students get in under a separate Government quota, at grossly subsidized fee, they cannot, but aid in the programme of the State to improve public health, more particularly, in the rural tribal and difficult areas. The object behind the prescription of the mandate of rural service is ostensibly to provide better health care in rural, tribal or those difficult areas of the citizens of this country, who would have no means to reach a doctor… It is a dream, that a day would come that medical graduates, would themselves volunteer to render such service, in the rural areas and it is expected that the dream would shortly come true, so that the Society would become Egalitarian resulting in an ‘Utopian Land’.”
The Court was hearing writ petitions by the MBBS graduates who challenged a June 2021 notification mandating that every government quota MBBS candidate who graduated in 2021 would have to undergo the compulsory rural service and execute a bond to that effect.
Following the issuance of the notification, the State government had issued a corrigendum amending Rule 11 of the Karnataka Selection of Candidates for Admission to Government Seats in Professional Educational Institutions Rules, 2006. The amendment stipulated that if the bond was violated, a penalty of Rs 15-30 lakh would be imposed.
The petitioners argued that the State lacked legislative competence to notify Rule 11 and that it was contrary to the National Medical Commission (NMC) Act, a Central law. They also contended that the bonds were executed when they had not yet attained 18 years of age, rendering them illegal.
In contrast, the State countered that these issues had already been addressed and negated by a coordinate bench of the Court in Bushra Abdul Aleem v. Government Of Karnataka.
The Court, referring to the judgment in Bushra Abdul Aleem, rejected the argument that the State lacked legislative competence and upheld the validity of the Rules. It observed that the NMC Act did not restrict the State’s power to regulate education under Entry-25 of List III of the Seventh Schedule of the Indian Constitution.
Consequently, the Court upheld the Rule but partially allowed the challenge by quashing the corrigendum solely in respect of the petitioners.
CASE TITLE:
Dr. Sharanya Mohan and Ors v. Union of India and Ors.
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