Supreme Court grants interim relief to petitioner in Nagaland MBBS quota case

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.

According to the High Court’s order, the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare had clarified that 42 MBBS and four BDS seats are allocated annually to Nagaland under the central pool, while a separate quota of 42 MBBS and three BDS seats is reserved for the Ministry of Defence. The court held that the state’s 2021 notification prescribing eligibility criteria for its central pool seats was not arbitrary or discriminatory.