The Hindu : Karnataka / Bangalore News : Notice issued to Goverment, health university

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Thursday, Jun 29, 2006

Karnataka

Karnataka - Bangalore

Notice issued to Goverment, health university

Staff Reporter

High courtround-up A dental student has moved court on PG admissions

BANGALORE: The Karnataka High Court on Wednesday ordered issue of emergent notices to the State Government, Rajiv Gandhi University of Health Sciences (RGUHS), the Karnataka Religious and Linguistic Minority Private Colleges Association and others on a petition by a dental student challenging the process of counselling and admission to postgraduate courses in dentistry in a Bangalore dental college.

The student, K.S.R. Prasad, said he had appeared for the common entrance test conducted by the association for admission to PG courses in dentistry.

He said a notification was issued on January 20, 2006 calling for applications to PG seats and an entrance test was held on February 19. The merit list of candidates was announced on February 27.

He alleged that some of the colleges, including the Bangalore Institute of Dental Sciences (BIDS), had not followed a fair and transparent admission process. Justice D.V. Shylendra Kumar, during the course of the arguments, orally observed that the association had not followed in letter and spirit the Supreme Court judgment in the P.A. Inamdar case.

He said neither the association nor the colleges coming under it had put on the Internet the results of the examination. Nor had the institutions intimated the Admission Overseeing Committee that the admissions were over.

He further observed that the process lacked transparency and that the association had violated several norms as had been set out by the Supreme Court in the matter of admissions, counselling and allotment of seats.

He admitted another petition by another BDS student with a similar grievance and said: "The real issue that remains is what course of action should be directed by the court so that it could be resorted to by the State Government now that the respondents (association) had indicated that no common counselling had been conducted for completing the admission process."

He said till date no common counselling had been conducted by the association despite an earlier court direction. He ordered issue of emergent notices to the respondents and adjourned the case to Thursday.

Regularisation of services

The State Government on Wednesday informed the court that the services of S. Malini, an expert in the forensic psychology division in the Forensic Science Laboratory (FSL) in Bangalore, would be regularised.

In its additional affidavit filed on the state of the FSL, Chief Secretary B.K. Das said it would take at least three months from the date of filing the affidavit to regularise the services of Dr. Malini.

The additional affidavit was filed after the High Court directed the Government to indicate the time frame within which the services of Dr. Malini, now on contract, would be regularised.

On June 20, the State, through the Chief Secretary, had filed an affidavit on the steps being taken by it to upgrade facilities in the FSL, including appointment of staff and purchase of equipment.

The first affidavit had said that the State intended to set up a Centre for Brain Sciences with state-of-art facilities for undertaking polygraphy, brain-mapping and narco-analysis tests.

The two affidavits had to be filed after the court took note of the arguments of State Public Prosecutor S. Dore Raju, saying that lack of adequate staff and experts was delaying the conduct of polygraph and narco-analysis tests on criminals.

Though the earlier affidavit had promised to take steps to appoint more staff, it had not mentioned any time frame.

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