MBBS admission: LHC asks selection board to allow additional time to candidate

LAHORE: The Lahore High Court (LHC) held that a selection board for admission to MBBS may relax the time limit and allow additional time for a candidate to file the requisite documents.

The court passed this order in a petition of a student, Abdul Rehman Amjad, and observed, “The name of the petitioner be deemed among the candidates selected for admission to MBBS first-year class for the session 2022-23”.

The court allowed the petition and declared that the non-selection of the petitioner in the first-year MBBS class for the session 2022-23 was illegal and unauthorized as the petitioner was clearly deprived of a chance to submit the domicile certificate.

The court said the object of a prescribed period of time for filing of documents is to clear the question of selection when the candidate appears before the selection board.

If he had failed to attach the same with the application originally, the chairman admission board in all fairness should have intimated to the petitioner before discarding his name from the final merit list of the selected candidates that he had failed to submit the domicile certificate, the court added.

The court directed the Higher Education University that the petitioner shall be allowed provisionally to join the classes without disturbing any candidate and his candidature shall be regularized in the eventuality of vacation of a seat by any candidate in the future, the court added.

The court further directed the respondents to initiate the process simultaneously for the creation of one extra seat only for the petitioner, which shall be ended automatically in the aforementioned eventuality of vacation of a seat by either of the students.

The court observed there seems to be no reason to interpret that time prescribed in the rule should be so religiously and rigidly observed as to subject the substantive right of a candidate to the production of documents within this limited time schedule.

It said in appropriate cases; therefore, even if the documents are not submitted within the prescribed period, the time could be relaxed.

The court noted that as per the admission schedule, after displaying the final merit list on December 17, 2022, some other selection lists were to be declared till December 31, 2022, and since the petitioner had made up the deficiency by submitting the domicile certificate on December 19, 2022, he should have been adjusted against any seat if had become available in the said lists, the court added.

Another aspect of the matter is that the respondents sent the e-mail to the petitioner on 17.12.2022 at 02:04 p.m. and on the same day, issued the final merit list simultaneously, which indicates that sending the e-mail to the petitioner was just a formality, thereafter he was not granted reasonable time to make up the deficiency, the court said.

Once the respondents afforded an opportunity to the petitioner to fill up the lacuna, he should have been granted reasonable time in this regard, the court added.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2023