MBBS: HC orders re-assessment of student’s disability

Ahmedabad: The Gujarat high court ordered the admission committee for undergraduate medical courses to keep a seat vacant for a physically challenged student and constituted a team of experts to re-examine him to assess the degree of his disability.

The case involves a student from Ahmedabad who has a medical certificate showing 50 per cent disability with muscular dystrophy.

Recently, his disability was assessed at 60 per cent by Civil Hospital in Ahmedabad. Having scored well in NEET, he applied for MBBS admission under the quota for the physically handicapped. The medical board attached to the admission committee examined him and declared him 90 per cent disabled and unsuitable for medical studies with the observation that his condition will continue to worsen. The appellate board also adopted the view of the medical board and confirmed 90 per cent disability.

This left him ineligible for admission according to rules for the quota, which has benchmarked disability between 40 per cent and 80 per cent for a candidate to be eligible for a seat for the handicapped.

Sharma approached the HC complaining that the medical board did not undertake any of the exercises required to assess a candidate’s disability and declared him 90 per cent disabled without any basis or reason.

The appellate board also adopted this view without undertaking any exercise. His advocate submitted that proper assessment of disability may be carried out as the student has scored enough in NEET to secure admission to B J Medical College. Students with less marks than him have secured admission under the quota, he stated.

The state government defended the decision of the medical board, which said that the student has muscular dystrophy with weakness in both upper limbs which is a progressive illness and it cannot improve. Justice Nikhil Kariel asked the government as to whether its experts simply scribble a number without assigning reasons.

The judge also said that the appellate board did not even bother to give its opinion and merely copy-pasted what the medical board had written.

The court formed a team of experts from Jamnagar and ordered the student’s examination at Ahmedabad in a week’s time and asked them for an opinion independent of what the medical board has written.