The SC granted interim relief to petitioner Vatsala Panghal, allowing her to take part in Nagaland’s ongoing MBBS counselling amid a central pool quota dispute.
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DIMAPUR — The Supreme Court on Monday granted interim relief to petitioner Vatsala Panghal, allowing her to participate in the ongoing MBBS counselling in Nagaland while hearing her appeal against a Gauhati High Court order that upheld the state government’s eligibility policy for central pool seats.
A bench of Justice Pamidighantam Sri Narasimha and Justice Atul S. Chandurkar issued notice to the respondents and permitted the petitioner to serve notice on the state’s standing counsel.
“However, as an interim measure, the petitioner shall be permitted to participate in the counselling,” the court said, clarifying that this “shall not give any right to claim in favour of the petitioner.”
The matter was earlier mentioned on October 31 before Justice Narasimha and Justice R. Mahadevan, when it was listed for hearing on November 3.
Panghal, daughter of a colonel commanding the 1 Nagaland Battalion NCC, has filed a special leave petition challenging the High Court’s October 23 judgment, which set aside a single-judge ruling in her favour.
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The dispute concerns whether wards of defence personnel posted in Nagaland can claim medical seats under the central pool quota allotted to the state.
In its October 23 ruling, the Division Bench of Chief Justice Ashutosh Kumar and Justice Arun Dev Choudhury held that the “deficient state” quota and the “defence personnel” quota under the central pool are distinct and mutually exclusive categories. It observed that the petitioner, as a ward of defence personnel, could not claim eligibility under the state quota in addition to the defence quota.