ORDER

The petitioner herein had applied for NEET examination for Medicine PG course for the academic year 2023-2024, wherein she had indicated her category as OBC. The cut-off mark prescribed for OBC category is 257, whereas the petitioner has scored 269 marks. However, while registering for counselling, the petitioner has given her category as General, for which the cut-off mark is 291. Now the petitioner seeks an issuance of writ of mandamus, directing the first respondent to permit the petitioner to participate in the NEET PG 2023 Counselling under the OBC category, as per the order passed in a similar matter in W.P.No.13387 of 2023 dated

28.06.2023, after all rounds of counselling.

2. The learned counsel for the petitioner made a statement as has been outlined above, and added that an inadvertent error in mentioning the correct category in the online application for registration for counselling, should not cost her future, and hence, prayed that her case may be considered by the first respondent as a last case after filling up the seats, for if any seats still remain to be filled up.

3.1 This is not the first case, nor will it be the last, that has visited this court under Article 226 of the Constitution, with a candidate repenting for a mistake, a perfectly avoidable lapse, occasioned purely due to lack of requisite care, with a plea for judicial intervention. This Court is painfully dismayed over the growing misconception generously entertained on the role and scope of judicial review which the petitioner and those of her ilk entertain. Driven perhaps by a false sense of perception that the judiciary is a haven to cover one's faults, a section of our citizens are willing to shame the role of judicial review by gambling on its process. The pattern is templated: the sympathy cords will be fine-tuned and symphonies will be played by the well-chiselled talents from the Bar to ensure that the pathos they produce overpower the intellectual responses of the courts. Overwhelmed by empathy, Courts do at times, unwittingly breach the outer contours of activism, and stray-walk outside the periphery of judicial review.

3.2 Judicial Review of administrative action which the Constitution envisages, is intended to ensure that the State and its instrumentalities, which may have been endowed with the powers of a giant, do not act like a giant, and to confine their conduct within the framework of the rule of law. Judicial review, therefore, is no more than ensuring that those who are bound by the Constitution, act within the bounds of Rule of Law. The role of the Court is hence limited to ensure that none oversteps the line, including the legislature viz-a-viz Part III of the Constitution.

3.3 Judicial review is often overlapped by judicial pro-activism. Judicial activism may have a role when the Courts are left to depend only on their sense of justice, guided by the Constitutional consciousness for accomplishing a Constitutional objective. The underlying principle is that Courts cannot plead helplessness to address a state of affairs which the Constitution considers as abhorrent to sustain. It is not a therapy of choice, but of need. It may involve an interpretation of a legislation, or a construction of a rule, with a lean towards Constitutional conceptualisation of justice. It may also include the power to fashion something new out of a legislative voidness, but at no time it may be attempted in rejection of the rules and the laws that exist. It is underscored that judicial discipline expected of the Courts is but an alternative statement for judicial restraint, and in this pursuit, the Court cannot get tempted when riding the wheels of justice.

4.1 Let the facts before this court now be tested on the plane of the principles stated above. Indisputably the petitioner is at fault. It is her lapse. And none of the respondents before the Court have breached the rule of law – in the context, of the procedure prescribed for medical admission. Wh