Court seeks responses from Centre, MCI

Plea against disability threshold for medical courses

New Delhi: The Delhi High Court on Tuesday sought responses of the Centre and the Medical Council of India (MCI) on a PIL seeking setting aside of a government notification which bars persons with more than 80 per cent disability from being admitted to undergraduate medical programmes, like MBBS.

A bench of Chief Justice Rajendra Menon and Justice V K Rao issued notice to the MCI and the ministries of Health and Social Justice and Empowerment and sought their replies to the petition by April 4, the next date of hearing. 

The plea by Satendra Singh, an associate professor in the Department of Physiology at Guru Teg Bahadur Hospital, has contended that the February 4 notification has been issued without any application of mind and was “highly irrational, arbitrary and discriminatory” 

In the petition, filed through advocate Gaurav Kumar Bansal, Singh has contended barring persons with more 80 per cent disability from taking admission in the medical courses violated their fundamental rights of equality and life guaranteed under the Constitution as well as various provisions of the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (RPWD) Act, 2016. 

The petition has stated that the notification under challenge has also made it mandatory that disabled candidates, selected for admission to medical courses, are required to have a separate disability certificate which would be issued by the Disability Assessment Boards set up at four metro cities.