Equitable jurisdiction under Article 226 can be exercised to protect the interests of students and direct the recognition of admissions and degrees in cases of illegal admissions by institutions.

JUDGMENT :

Sharad Kumar Sharma, J.

The brief facts of the case are that the petitioners who are 9 in number had preferred this writ petition. Thereby, they have prayed for quashing of the impugned order dated 5th July, 2018, as passed by respondent no. 3 and simultaneously, had also prayed for quashing of the orders dated 9th April, 2018, 25th August, 2017 and 15th February 2017, passed by respondent no. 1 and, a Writ of Mandamus too to the respondents, to permit them to pursue their M.D. Courses in Ayurvedic Discipline of Medical Sciences, for which they have been admitted by the institution of respondent no. 5.

2. The petitioner has submitted, that the Government of India, by virtue of its notification dated 9th May 2017, had waived off the condition of procurement of minimum 50% of qualifying marks for the purposes of being admitted in the MD Courses and thus, inference drawn was that, even those candidates who had minimal marks had been permitted to be admitted. But, still the admission has had to be continued to be made as per the stipulations provided by the Medical Counsel.

3. The petitioner submits that on an extension of proposal by the institution for granting admission in the MD Ayurvedic, as it was then published in the Dainik Jagran on 25th October, 2017.

4. The petitioners participated in the counselling, through the mechanism which was adopted by respondent no. 5 and had appeared for counselling, which was held on 28th November 2017, at Uttaranchal Hospital, Rajpur Road, Dehradun, which was conducted, on the basis of the merit of the BAMS, which was prepared by the Association of Combined Entrance Examination for the Post Graduate Courses in the MD Ayurvedic, the petitioners were allotted admissions for the Academic Session 2017-18.

5. The letters which had been issued by the respondent no.1 i.e. dated 25th August, 2017 and 15th February 2017. In fact, those were the correspondences, which were issued prior to the letter of 9th April 2018 and as per the letter of 9th April 2018.

6. In fact, the respondent no. 3 in furtherance thereto by the correspondence dated 5th July 2018, which is impugned in the writ petition, had refused to enroll the petitioners for their respective MD, Ayurveda Courses for the academic session 2017-18, on the ground that the petitioners have been admitted by respondent no. 5 directly without the candidates’ having qualified their AIAPGET examination.

7. The petitioners submitted that the refusal made by the respondent no. 3 by the order of 5th July 2018, in fact, it ought not to have created any impairment in recognising the petitioner’s admission made by respondent no. 5, because, in view of the government order/notification which had been issued by respondent no. 1 on 9th May 2017, the requirement of obtaining of minimal marks since was given away, the petitioner’s admission made by respondent no. 5, ought to have been reckoned, though, it was de-hors to the process of grant of admission and the committee itself would not have exclusively catered to it, to grant admission to the petitioners.

8. When the writ petition was initially instituted and was argued at an admission stage, the Coordinate Bench of this Court, while initially directing the respondent to file their counter affidavit had passed an order of 8th October, 2018 by way of an interim arrangement which reads as under :

3. “Learned counsel for the petitioners has apprised this Court that many students who have obtained “zero” mark or even “negative” marks have been given admission. In other words, what he is trying to show before this Court is that appearance in the examination is merely a formality. This fact has also been admitted by the Union of India as well as by the University, however, they have said that since this examination was introduced for the first time in the year 2017, qualification in the examination was dispensed with only for 2017-18. We are also presently concerned with the examination of 2017-18.

4. As an interim