MERAJUL HOQUE Vs. THE STATE OF WEST BENGAL

JUDGEMENT

(1.) All the four writ petitions involve the same question of facts and law. Accordingly, they were all taken up together for hearing and disposal. However, for the sake of convenience in this judgment I will refer to the records of AST 278 of 2017.

(2.) The case of the petitioner is that she passed the National Eligibility-cum- Entrance Test (under graduate.-2017 (in short 'NEET'. with 93.485187 percentile score having all India rank of 70725. She participated in all rounds of counseling conducted by the respondent no. 2. However, even after verification, she was not allotted any seat in any medical college. After attending the final manual round of counseling on 26 August, 2017, she came to know that seats are still lying vacant in several medical colleges of West Bengal. She contacted the respondent authorities for allotting one of the vacant seats to her, but in vain. She moved a writ petition in this Court being AST No. 264 of 2017 which was disposed of by this Court by directing the respondent no. 2 to consider the petitioner's prayer and if seats were vacant and the petitioner is otherwise eligible for admission to the MBBS course going by the merit list, to issue necessary directions for admission of the petitioner on the MBBS course. The petitioner contacted the authorities with the aforesaid order who initially said that they were looking into the matter but finally told her on 31 August, 2017 that she could not be allotted any seat in any medical college even if seats were vacant. The petitioner contends that the cut-off date for admission was 31 August, 2017 and the petitioner approached this Court and the authorities prior thereto. It was the duty of the authorities to fill up all the seats. The authorities have acted in breach of law and arbitrarily.

(3.) Mr. L.K. Gupta, learned Sr. Adv. and Mr. Joydip Kar, learned Sr. Adv. appearing for the petitioners relied on several decisions of the Hon'ble Apex Court and the High Courts in support of their submission that it is the duty of the respondent authorities to fill up all seats and a candidate can be given admission even after the cut-off date if he/she was wrongly deprived of a seat earlier. Mr. Gupta, learned Sr. Counsel relied on the following authorities: