IN THE HIGH COURT FOR THE STATE OF TELANGANA AT HYDERABAD THE HONOURABLE SMT. JUSTICE RENUKA YARA WRIT PETITION No.471 of 2026

16^th DAY OF MARCH, 2026 Between:

Durgam Venkatesh Kumar and 29 others.

…Petitioners AND The State of Telangana and 3 others.

...Respondents

ORDER:

Heard Sri Mahadev Anyarambhatla, learned counsel for the petitioners and Sri R. Nagarjuna Reddy, learned Assistant Government Pleader for Medical, Health and Family Welfare Department, for respondent No.1 and Sri T. Sharath, learned Standing Counsel for respondent Nos.2 and 3. Perused the entire record.

2. The writ petition is filed with the following prayer:

“…to issue writ/order/direction, particularly in the nature of Writ of Mandamus, declaring the action of Respondents in evaluation of the answer sheets only by a single or two valuators instead of four as contemplated under NMC regulations, and also in the absence of not following the regulations and awarding the marks accordingly as highly arbitrary and illegal and consequently direct the Respondents herein to value the answer sheets in accordance with the regulations issued by NMC and pass…”

Case of the petitioners:

3. The writ petition is filed by the petitioners, who have attended examination conducted by the respondents for the batch of 2023 which was held in the first week of October 2025, alleging that the examination has been conducted in violation of statutory regulations i.e., ‘Post-Graduate Medical Educational Regulations, 2023’ (‘PGMER-23’) issued by National Medical Commission (‘NMC’), when all the medical universities and colleges are bound by such regulations. As per said regulations, as contemplated under Regulation 8.1, the medical college has to conduct the Formative Assessment (examination) and the university will conduct Summative Assessment (examination). Both the assessments shall consist of theory, clinical, practical and viva voce. The petitioners had achieved good marks in internal examinations in the Formative Assessment, and none of them failed.

4. In the previous examination conducted by respondent No.2- university, the percentage of failure candidates was 1-2%, whereas with the batch of 2023, the failure percentage increased to 11% and said increase is improbable. The petitioners submit that they attempted all the questions and submitted their answers correctly. But said answers have not been valued properly in accordance with statutory regulations. Therefore, the petitioners were declared failed on the ground they have obtained 1 to 5 marks less than the required in aggregate or in individual paper. When one of the candidates made a request, her answer paper was revalued and it was found that for some of the answers she has written, no marks were assigned. After revaluation, said candidate, who was declared to have failed initially, was subsequently declared to have passed the examination. In view of said incident, the Vice-Chancellor has resigned from the post, as per newspaper reports. It is also learnt that at least 4 to 5 candidates were declared passed after such re-evaluation, though they were initially declared to have failed the examination. This backdrop gives ample scope for suspicion about the arbitrariness of the results declared on 04.11.2025, which is within a span of four days from the date of practical examinations, the last being held on 30.10.2025.

5. Further, as per Regulation 8.2 of PGMER-23, the examinations for the post graduates contemplates that examiners shall have three years experience as recognized postgraduate guide in the concerned subject. Further, minimum number of examiners per postgraduate examination shall be four, out of which two shall be internal examiners and at least one of them shall be from a different university outside the State and that an examiner shall not be appointed for more than two consecutive regular examinations for the same institution.

6. As per Regulation 8.3, the MD/MS examination consists of theory paper, clinical/practical a