The Supreme Court has disapproved the practice of wasting a large number of postgraduate (PG) medical seats every year. Hence, to prevent such a situation, on Wednesday, the bench stated that the Center and the Medical Counseling Committee should ensure that not even a single seat remains vacant this year. The bench added that the country needs more Doctors and Specialized Medical Professionals, as the pandemic shed light on the doctor-patient disparity.

Taking note of the 1,456 vacant seats in the PG course after the 2021-22 counseling, the bench headed by Justices MR Shah and Aniruddha Bose asked the Center and the MCC to file an affidavit. The bench convened on Thursday and stated that the admission process needs to be streamlined and an additional mop-up session should be conducted to fill the vacant seats.

The Centre and MCC showed their reluctance to the bench’s order as the counseling for 2022-23 will be starting soon, and the mop-up session could delay the process. The court took up this case after a plea filed by Petitioner Atharav approached the SC to seek the court’s intervention to ensure all the seats in medical admission are filled up.