Karnataka High Court imposes cost of ₹1 lakh on KEA for illegally cancelling PG medical seat allotted to in-service doctor

The High Court of Karnataka on Thursday imposed a cost of ₹1 lakh on the Karnataka Examination Authority (KEA) for illegally cancelling a post-graduate medical seat allotted under in-service category to a doctor working in Jayadeva Institute of Cardiovascular Sciences and Research, Bengaluru.

A division bench comprising Chief Justice P.S. Dinesh Kumar and Justice T.G. Shivashankare Gowda passed the order while allowing a petition filed by 32-year-old Dr. Rajesh Kumar D., an assistant surgeon in Jayadeva institute.

The petitioner, after qualifying in NEET-PG, 2021, was on February 2, 2022, allotted a seat in MD Respiratory Medicine course in Rajiv Gandhi Institute of Respiratory and Chest Diseases, Bengaluru, under Scheduled Caste quota reserved for in-service doctors working in autonomous medical institutions in the post-graduate medical courses.

Intimated through WhatsApp

Later, the KEA cancelled the seat by sending a letter, written by the Director of Medical Education (DME) to KEA on February 23, 2022, to cancel the seat allotted to the petitioner for want of proper no objection certificate from Jayadeva institute, through WhatsApp on March 2, 2022.

The Bench found that both the DME and the KEA acted strangely by ordering cancellation of allotted seat to the petitioner without issuing notice to him by merely acting on a letter written by another aspiring candidate, Dr. Pradeep Naik G, to whom the cancelled seat was allotted later.

Cancelled seat allotted

Also, the Bench said that it was surprising as to how the cancelled seat was allotted to Dr. Naik in the second round of counselling even though availability of the cancelled seat was not shown in the list of available seats in the second round.

Though the KEA had said that it would allot another seat for the same course in the same institution to the petitioner, the Court declined to accept the proposal by observing that “the collective stand of the KEA and Dr. Naik is to defeat petitioner’s claim and to cover up the mismanagement and illegal allotment of seat to Dr. Naik.”

While cancelling allotment of seat to Dr. Naik, the Court set aside cancellation of seat to the petitioner and directed KEA to allot the cancelled seat to the petitioner.