IMPORTANT POINT
The court established that obtaining an eligibility certificate before enrolling in a foreign medical institution is a statutory requirement that cannot be remedied post-facto.

ORDER :

PRAYER: Writ Petition filed under Article 226 of the Constitution of India praying to issue a Writ of Certiorarified Mandamus calling for the records relating to the email dated 01.02.2024 sent by the 1st respondent to the petitioner's e-mail, namely, “priyaharini221@gmail.com” and quash the same and consequently direct the 1st respondent to consider the Petitioner's Application in No.R-15012/26566/2023 dated 30.08.2023 for approval, and also to direct the 2nd respondent to publish the result of the FMGE examination written by the petitioner pursuant to the order of this Hon'ble Court dated 28.12.2023 in W.P.No.36021 of 2023, within a time frame as may be fixed by this Hon'ble Court.

The petitioner is aggrieved by a communication dated 01.02.2024 sent by the National Medical Commission (NMC)/R1 rejecting her application for enrolling for the Foreign Medical Graduate Examination (FMGE) examination along with consequential relief to direct the NMC to publish the result of the FMGE examination written on 20.01.2024.

2. As far as the second prayer is concerned, Mr.K.Seshasayee, learned counsel for R2 has circulated a copy of e-mail dated 27.06.2024 sent by Additional Director (Medical), National Board of Examinations in Medical Sciences/R2, in compliance of a direction issued on 24.06.2024, confirming that the petitioner has not been successful in the examination written by her on 20.01.2024. With this, the second limb of the prayer in the Writ Petition stands achieved.

3. The submissions of Mr.N.Subramaniayan, learned counsel for the petitioner are set out below:

The petitioner had written her 12th standard examination in 1994 with the core subjects of Physics, Chemistry, Maths and Computer Science. She claims to have completed a Diploma in Pharmacy in 2002. She thereafter joined the Jalal-Abad State University in Kyrgyzstan in 2016 and completed the MBBS course in 2022.

4. She applied to R1 (Application No.R.15012/022376/2022 – Regn. dated 15.07.2022) to appear for the FMGE examination and for this purpose, she claims to have approached a browsing centre for assistance in making the application. This becomes relevant for the reason that there have admittedly been manipulations in the application submitted to FMGE, which is one of the reasons why the application has come to be rejected.

5. The application filed online was accompanied by a mark sheet that contained information that the petitioner had taken Biology as a subject in school. However, the fact of the matter is that the petitioner had not taken Biology as a core subject in school at all and had studied Computer Science.

Admittedly, the 12th standard score card had contained a manipulation, i.e., in that the word ‘Biology’ had been substituted for ‘Computer Science’. I will dilate upon this aspect little later.

6. According to the petitioner, on coming to know that there had been manipulations in her application, she immediately filed a letter dated 13.06.2023 before R1 confirming that she had studied Physics, Chemistry, Maths and Computer Science and asking that the application be ignored. No copy of that letter has been supplied. Thereafter, she appeared for the Biology paper under the National Institute of Open Schooling (NIOS) and filed yet another application enclosing also the marksheet containing the result of the biology examination.

7. The second application was rejected vide order dated 16.08.2023 that reads thus:

The documents submitted by you were found to be forged or fabricated and inconsistent with each other in both applications, i.e., R.15012/022376/2022-Regn and R.15012/026566/2023-Regn, through the online portal. Additionally, according to the current application i.e., R.15012/026566/2023-Regn, the candidate claims to have studied Biology as an additional subject after completing MBBS in 2023, which is not acceptable under prevailing regulations. The requirement stipulates that subjects in 10+2 must be studied before pursuing an MBBS.

8. According to the