NILESH BALWANT GOURSHETTIWAR Vs. UNION OF INDIA

JUDGEMENT

(1.) Rule, by consent returnable forthwith. With the consent of Counsel and at their request the Petitions are taken up for hearing and final disposal.

(2.) This Judgment would govern a batch of nine Petitions, all of them filed by Doctors who seek to challenge a communication issued by the National Board of Examination on 14 June 2011 holding that they could not be considered for registration as DNB trainees for the session commencing from July 2010 in the specialties of Radiology, ENT and Paediatrics.

(3.) Prior to June 2010, certain guidelines have been framed by the National Board of Examinations, the Second Respondent, for admission to the post graduate DNB programme. Under the earlier guidelines, aptitude assessments were required to be conducted by the institute granting admission after inviting applications in a transparent manner upon wide publicity. Each institute was required to evaluate objective skills for assessing the professional aptitude of candidates and a model scale for assessment of skills as proposed was annexed as Annexure 9 to the Guidelines. The institute concerned was required to prepare a subject wise merit list based on the performance of the candidates as assessed in the aptitude test. Under Annexure 9, 10 marks were required to be assigned; of them, 5 were for knowledge about clinical procedures, surgical skills, aptitude and commonly practiced protocols in the concerned specialty. The remaining 5 marks were to be assigned on the basis of experience, academic achievement, publications and conferences attended. Under the earlier Rules, an eligibility test was conducted by the Second Respondent. It is common ground that individual marks of candidates were not disclosed and candidates were only required to clear the eligibility test with a minimum of 50% marks.