IN THE HIGH COURT FOR THE STATE OF TELANGANA AT HYDERABAD THE HON’BLE SRI JUSTICE NAGESH BHEEMAPAKA WRIT PETITION No.3276 of 2026

10^thFebruary, 2026 Between:

1. Maheshwara Medical College, and another … Petitioners AND

1. The Union of India, through its Secretary Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, New Delhi, and others … Respondents

ORDER

The petitioner is a private, non-profit medical college established in the year 2021, situated in Patancheru—an industrial hub catering to a population exceeding 25 lakhs. The gravamen of the petitioner’s case is that the National Medical Commission (NMC) and its Medical Assessment and Rating Board (MARB) have acted in an arbitrary, unreasonable, and ultra vires manner by initially granting only 12 PG seats, and thereafter allowing only a partial and inadequate increase, despite the institution’s demonstrable statutory entitlement to a total of 58 seats. It is asserted that the petitioner’s eligibility for 58 seats flows directly from its strong “Fixed Integers,” namely its infrastructure, beds, faculty strength, which fully comply with the Minimum Standard of Requirements for Post-Graduate Courses-2024 (PGMSR-2024) notified on 23.08.2024. It is alleged that the respondents have disregarded their own binding regulations, particularly the prescribed Teacher–Student ratios and Footnote 3 of Annexure-III of the PGMSR- 2024, which expressly permits higher-cadre faculty, such as Professors, to be counted towards the requirements of lower cadres. To illustrate, in the Department of General Medicine, the petitioner has 7 Professors in position against the unit requirements, all of whom are duly verified through the Aadhaar Enabled Biometric Attendance System (AEBAS), thereby legally supporting a substantially higher student intake.

1.1 It is contended that the petitioner-Medical College was granted affiliation by 4^th respondent-University, Kaloji Narayana Rao University of Health Sciences (KNRUHS), vide a Consent of Affiliation (CoA) proceedings dated 20.08.2020 and 29.08.2020, for a total of 94 PG seats, including specific allocations such as 12 seats in General Surgery and 11 seats in General Medicine. The petitioner relies on these proceedings as irrefutable proof that its infrastructure and faculty strength had been duly verified and accepted even prior to the commencement of its academic operations.

1.2 For the academic year 2025–26, the petitioner formally applied on 10.12.2024 for enhancement of PG seats in six specialty departments, under separate application IDs, including Application No. NMC/PGI/2025- 26/001568 for Orthopaedics. These applications were supported by Essentiality Certificates issued by the Government of Telangana on the same date, bearing File No. 11787/C1/2024 across the concerned departments. Subsequently, the 3^rd respondent-MARB issued a show-cause notice dated 13.08.2025 raising an objection regarding the absence of a Consent of Affiliation. In compliance, the petitioner submitted the newly issued CoA from the 4^th respondent-KNRUHS dated 21.12.2024 on

21.08.2025, which itself expressly recommended enhancement of seats, including an increase in General Medicine from 2 to 8 seats.

1.3 Notwithstanding the same, the NMC/MARB issued a public notice dated 27.11.2025, followed by individual Letters of Disapproval dated 17.12.2025. These letters were never communicated to the petitioner, thereby effectively depriving it of its statutory right to prefer a timely appeal. The purported grounds for rejection included allegations of “inflated data” in General Surgery and Obstetrics & Gynaecology, an assertion that “IVP is 01 per year” in the Department of Radio Diagnosis, and an observation that the “death rate is very low (21 in last year)” in General Medicine.

1.4 Aggrieved thereby, the petitioner preferred a First Appeal before the NMC on 19.12.2025, categorically refuting the stated deficiencies. The petitioner clarified, inter alia, that the IVP figure reflected a daily average and