JUDGMENT :

SUNITA AGARWAL, J.

1. Heard learned counsels for the parties and perused the record.

2. Two appeals have been filed by the Admission Committee for Professional Post Medical Education Courses [ACPPMEC] challenging the common judgment and order dated 26.2.2024 passed by the learned Single Judge in deciding two writ petitions namely, Special Civil Application No.21658 of 2023 along with Special Civil Application No.432 of 2024.

3. Both the writ petitions had been filed by the prospective candidates who were seeking admission in Post Graduate Ayurveda/Homeopathy Courses. As per the instructions issued by the National Commission of Indian System of Medicine [NCISM] and National Commission of Homeopathy [NCH], New Delhi, the time table/schedule for Central/State/UT counseling has been provided wherein cut-off date for admission to ASU and Homeopathy Post Graduate Course for the academic year 2023-24 has been mentioned as 16.12.2023. As per the schedule provided in the Notification issued by the National Commission for Homeopathy, three rounds of counseling were provided to complete the process. The counseling process in the last round, i.e. stray vacancy round was to be completed for the States from 7.12.2023 to 16.12.2023 and the last date of joining in the stray vacancy round has been clearly mentioned in the schedule as 16.12.2023. The time table/schedule given by the NCISM/NCH also provided that the cut-off date and time for uploading the admitted students’ data by the institutions on NCISM/NCH portal was 16.12.2023 before 6:00 p.m. The guidelines further contains the following instructions:-

“19. There shall not be any offline admission or admission without counseling (Central/State/UT), and any admissions in contravention of this shall not be approved.

20. Admission made in violation of the Central Government/NCISM/NCH directives will be treated as invalid, and action will be initiated under the NCISM Act, 2020/NCH Act, 2020.

22. Admission shall not be approved, by any means, after the cut-off date and time for admission as specified by NCISM/NCH.

23. No authority has the power to extend or modify the cut-off date of admission specified by NCISM/NCH, and such admissions shall not be approved.”

4. It seems that during the continuation of the admission process, a writ petition namely, Special Civil Application No.19497 of 2023 was filed by the Association of Ayurved and Homeopathy Institutions of State of Gujarat namely, Aarogyam Association of Regional Ayush Colleges with the assertion that the guidelines provided by NCISM/NCH do not contain the provision for offline admission without counseling as per the Rule 15 of the Gujarat Professional Post-Graduate Ayurved and Homeopathy Medical Educational Courses (Regulation of Admission) Rules, 2018 [“Rules of 2018” for short]. It was asserted that as per Rule 15 of the Rules of 2018, the modality of filling up of the vacant seats which occurred after the completion of admission process and exhaustion of merit list of eligibility candidates as per the admission rules has not been worked out. The resultant vacancies are to be fulfilled from the candidates who have applied to the Admission Committee and qualify as per the AIA-PGET criteria, but not included in the merit list of the Admission Committee because of not fulfilling the other criteria as per the rules.

5. It was asserted that Rule 15 of the Rules of 2018 envisages that after completion of the process of admission, if any seats are still remain vacant, then such vacant seats shall be displayed on the official website and on the notice board of the office of the Admission Committee and the colleges shall be at liberty to fill up the seats as per the criteria laid down by the Government of India, NCISM and NCH for the respective year from the merit list of AIA-PGET of the current year by non-admitted students.

6. In the wake of this contention of the Association of the colleges, the Writ Court has opined that there is an apparen