In a significant ruling, the Supreme Court has directed the Shri Guru Ram Rai Institute of Medical and Health Sciences in Dehradun, Uttarakhand, to release the original documents of 91 MBBS graduates that were withheld due to unpaid fees. The decision came after the graduates expressed their inability to register as medical practitioners or pursue higher studies without these documents.
Chief Justice D Y Chandrachud, leading a bench that included Justices J B Pardiwala and Manoj Misra, responded to the pleas presented by senior lawyer Gaurav Agarwal and advocate Tanvi Dubey. The court mandated the college to hand over the documents upon the payment of Rs 7.5 lakh by each student, who must also sign an undertaking to pay the remaining arrears.
This verdict addresses the contentious fee hike imposed by the college, which had unilaterally raised the annual fees from Rs 5 lakh to Rs 13.22 lakh for students under the All India quota, and from Rs 4 lakh to Rs 9.78 lakh for state quota admissions, applied retrospectively. The graduates challenged these hikes as “exorbitant” and legally dubious, leading to their inability to commence their professional careers.
Advocate Dubey highlighted the plight of these young doctors, stuck without the means to engage in further education or professional practice, stating, “Without original documents, the doctors are forced to sit idle at home. They can neither participate in counselling of NEET-PG nor start their practice in a hospital.”
The issue has been mired in litigation for several years, with a related petition still pending at the Nainital High Court against the retrospective application of the fee increase. The students had been ordered by the high court to settle their dues in nine instalments, a directive complicated by the college’s insistence that internships could not commence without full payment.
Representing the college, Senior Advocate Gopal Sankaranarayanan argued that releasing documents without securing fee payments posed challenges in managing financial accounts, as some students failed to fulfill their financial obligations after receiving their documents.
