The Madras High Court has refused to interfere with the Tamil Nadu government’s practice of providing incentive marks for admission in post graduate (PG) medical courses to government doctors who had served in rural, remote and hilly areas after completion of their MBBS course.
Chief Justice S.V. Gangapurwala and Justice P.D. Audikesavalu held that the court need not interfere with a policy decision of the State government when the objective behind the grant of incentive marks was “laudable and benevolent” and such practice was not barred by any statute, rule or regulation.
Disposing of writ petitions filed by some PG medical seat aspirants, the Bench said that neither Regulation 9(4) of the Post Graduate Medical Education Regulations, 2000, nor a Government Order issued on November 7, 2020, for providing incentive marks suffered from the vice of arbitrariness.
Earlier, senior counsel P. Wilson, representing Tamil Nadu Medical Officers Association, told the court that the State government hands over 50% of PG seats to All India Quota (AIQ) and fills up the rest under the State quota. No incentive marks are provided to those admitted under the AIQ.
To encourage government doctors to serve in remote areas and offer healthcare facilities to people residing there, the State government had been following the practice of awarding incentive marks to such doctors in PG admissions. Doctors serving in urban areas were not awarded those marks.
After recording the submission, the judges wrote that the intent of the State government was bona fide and, hence, there was no need to interfere with the practice.
