JUDGMENT

FAZAL ALI, J. :—Soon after our hardwon freedom there was a gradual rise in the urban population in view of the process of industrialisation and setting up of heavy projects and industries in order to make out country more and more self-sufficient. This led to a certain spurt and rise in the urban population as people from the rural areas started pouring into the urban cities which provided far better opportunities for education and employment than the rural areas. This sudden increase in urban population led to the spread of epidemics and diseases resulting in a rapid growth of educational institutions both in the public and private sectors.

2. In these appeals, we are concerned only with the medical education; the Government had to face a serious problem with the coming up of medical colleges which started growing like mushrooms and were charging huge capitation fees to make substantial profits without providing proper medical education and caring precious little for achieving excellence of standards in medical education which, if denuded of such standards, would pose a serious health hazard to the people. Surely, We would not wish that people who could ill-afford to go in for well equipped expensive medical practitioners should be thrown at the mercy of quacks. Similar situation arose in technical, engineering and other kinds of institutions but we would concentrate on the feature and facets of medical education which alone forms the subject-matter of these appeals. We have seen from our experience that each year there is a huge rush for admission to seats in medical colleges for various courses, which being rather few and insufficient to control or absorb all sorts and kinds of candidates as the well-known Persian proverb "JAYE TANG AST WA MARDUMA BISYAR" (i. e. little space and people many) seems aptly to apply in such a situation. However, in order to meet the contingency resulting from a heavy rush for admissions the institutions set up certain standards or tests which had to be complied with before candidates could be admitted. Here also, as in other spheres, favouritism and nepotism have their own role to play as a result of which merits suffer. In order to meet these contingencies and ward off such evils, the Government through its circulars and the Medical Council of India being alive to this delicate and difficult problem sought to solve the problem by making rules and regulations for admission of candidates to various courses in different disciplines (subjects) to achieve excellence in medical standards keeping in view statutory and constitutional reservations. Unfortunately, however, these rules were often flouted and observed more in breach than in compliance by those who were in charge of the medical education: the result was again a huge spurt of writ petitions in the High Court to weed out the inefficient and ineligible and absorb the efficient and eligible.

3. With this short prelude, now to the facts of the case which disclose a sad story indeed - not because those in charge of the institutions commit errors but because the Courts start directing the authorities to grant provisional admissions to students even if they did not deserve the same in some cases. Experience has shown that in view of the huge accumulation of arrears in Courts, it takes a long time for the petitions to be disposed of, hence we have evolved the practice of forcing the authorities to grant provisional admissions which has resulted in a piquant and pungent situation because by the time the case comes up for hearing, the rejected candidates having completed their course and having appeared at the examination with every hope of success become eligible for admission to the higher course in case of success though the Court may ultimately find that their initial rejection was justified. Such a situation becomes a sort of a fait accompli for those in charge of the institutions as a result of which the candidates are admitted in due de