APHC010566792025 IN THE HIGH COURT OF ANDHRA PRADESH Bench Sr.No:-2 AT AMARAVATI [3443]

WRIT APPEAL NO: 1253 of 2025 NRI Medical College and General Hospital and another ...Appellants Vs.

Dr. Somu Sai Praneetha and others ...Respondents **********

Advocate for Appellants : Mr. N. Subba Rao, Sr. Counsel, appearing vice Mr. Ramakrishna Akurathi Advocates for Respondents : Mr. Y. V. Ravi Prasad, Sr. Counsel, appearing vice Mr. N. Ashwani Kumar GP for Medical, Health & Family Welfare Mrs. T. V. Sridevi, Standing Counsel for Dr. N.T.R. University of Health Sciences CORAM : T HE CHIEF JUSTICE DHIRAJ SINGH THAKUR SRI JUSTICE NINALA JAYASURYA DATE : 27th November 2025 P C :

The present Writ Appeal, under Clause 15 of the Letters Patent, has been preferred against an order, dated 22.09.2025, passed in W.P.No.27615 of 2024.

2. The genesis of the controversy before the learned single Judge revolves around the fact of withholding of the certificates of the petitioner by the NRI Medical College and General Hospital/appellant No.1 herein on account of the failure of the petitioner to pay the fee for the course to which the petitioner was admitted in the year, 2018, and has since completed it. According to the appellants, the petitioner was admitted under the management quota in ‘category-c’ and was required to pay fee accordingly. The fee which, according to the petitioner, was to be paid was in ‘category-b’, which had a lower fee slab.

3. Learned counsel for the petitioner would place reliance upon a resolution passed in 02.08.2021, which envisaged that children of the Members of the Society who could not secure regular admission under convener quota for Under-Graduate courses would be charged tuition fee on par with ‘B’ category students and for graduate courses at 25% less than the fee fixed for such courses.

4. Learned counsel for the appellant College, however, denies the existence of any such resolution.

5. In any case, this is a matter to be considered by the learned single Judge, where the writ proceedings are still pending.

6. Be that as it may, with a view to get over the impasse created on account of the aforementioned facts, the learned single Judge, by virtue of the order impugned, directed the release of the educational certificates, including internship certificates, which were being withheld with the appellant College, subject to payment of Rs.30,00,000/- within a period of four weeks. The said amount has since been deposited by the petitioner, who is respondent in the present proceedings.

7. Learned counsel for the appellant College, however, would submit that, in case the certificates were released in favour of the petitioner, the outstanding amount to the extent of Rs.61 Lakhs (tentative) would remain unrecoverable and therefore stated that a bank guarantee be furnished for the balance amount.

8. There are a host of judgments which were relied upon in an earlier writ petition, which we considered and decided in W.A.No.847 of 2023 titled Mandava Krishna Kautilya Vs. State of Andhra Pradesh and in particular the judgments rendered in the cases of D. Vaishnavi Vs. State of Telangana, (2020) SCC Online TS 89; Detla Srujan Bhupathi Varma Vs. The Joint Secretary, Department of Higher Education, New Delhi and others, W.P.No.6722 of 2022, dated 16.03.2022 ; and S. Muthukamatchi Vs. The Director of Technical Education, Anna University, Chennai and others, W.P.(MD) No.14394 of 2012, dated 18.12.2012, which hold that certificates cannot legally be retained by the medical college on any ground whatsoever especially on account of non-payment of fees by the petitioner.

However, the view that we had expressed in aforementioned W.A.No.847 of 2023 was that a person if he approaches the Court based upon falsehood or his guilty of playing fraud, then the Court, in those circumstances, could refuse relief. Reliance in this regard can be placed upon judgments of the Apex Court in S. P. Chengalvaraya Naidu Vs. Jagannath

and others⁴ and A.V. Papayya Sastry