Disabled medical aspirants get 2nd chance : Chennai

Giving a second chance to five disabled MBBS aspirants, who were rejected by a medical team during admission counselling last month, the Madras high court has formed a four-member special team of doctors to re-assess their eligibility.

Justice K K Sasidharan, passing interim orders on the petitions of the five students on Thursday, asked the doctors to submit their report by July 23. He then adjourned the case to July 24 for further hearing.

The students said they suffered certain percentage of orthopaedic disability and competent medical boards in the respective districts had assessed their disability and issued permanent disability certificate as well.

Tamil Nadu, which has 3% reservation for disabled candidates in MBBS admissions, has 54 seats for them. This year, 131 applications were received and only 81 were referred to a medical board constituted by the director of medical education. Of them, only 45 were declared eligible for admission under the physically disabled category.

As per rules, candidates with disability of lower limbs between 50% and 70% are considered for admission under the quota. If candidates are not available in that category, then others with disability of lower limbs between 40% and 50% would be considered.

In effect, those with more than 70% disability or less than 40% disability would not be considered for admission under the disabled category. These five students were rejected by the medical team at the time of counselling, saying they had disabilities either exceeding 70% or below 40%.

They moved the high court saying they were subjected to a second medical examination though they possessed valid disability certificates issued by medical boards and claimed that the medical team at the counselling centre did not assess their disabilities properly. All 81 candidates were examined on a single day, they said. The expert team saw only photographs to reject their cadidature.

The government advocate, however, denied the allegation and said it took two days for the doctors to assess the disabled MBBS aspirants.

Justice Sasidharan, making it clear that seats reserved for physically disabled should not be diverted to general pool, said, "The court has got a solemn duty to protect the interests of the physically disabled persons, who want to come up in life."

He then named four doctors - Dr Rajasekaran, head of the department of orthopaedics, Madras Medical College (MMC); Dr K Banu, professor of neurology, MMC; Dr Ramesh, director in-chage, Institute of Rehabilitation Medicine; and Dr Nalli Yuvaraj, spine specialist, MMC - to re-assess the disability and submit a report.

Source : TOI , Chennai ; 12th July 2013