The High Court of Karnataka has imposed a cost of ₹1 lakh each on two private dental college for wasting the time of the court by leading a few students to the court in a bid to fill up the vacant seats in the undergraduate dental course for the academic year 2021-22.
A Division Bench comprising Justice B. Veerappa and Justice K.S. Hemalekha passed the order while dismissing the petitions filed by Sri Venkateshwara Dental College and Hospital, Bengaluru and KVG Dental College and Hospital, Sullia in Dakshina Kannada district.
Both the colleges, managed by a single management, had filed the petitions along with six students, showing the addresses of the students as “care of” the colleges even though the students were not admitted to the colleges to the BDS course. The colleges had sought a direction to the Karnataka Examinations Authority (KEA) to open the portal to enable petitioner-students to register for the mop-up round of admission more than a month after the admission through the mop-up round was closed.
The colleges had contending that the petitioner-students could not register for mop-up round held in May 2022 as KEA’s portal was not opening for registration and hence sought directions to the KEA to allow them to register for admitting them to the colleges and recognising their admission.
However, the court, from the records, found that mop-up round was held in May for the all-India quota sears by the Medical Counselling Committee and not by the KEA as contended in the petition, and the registration for the mop-up round in Karnataka through KEA was closed way back on April 1.
Wondering how the six petitioner-students, who were not at all admitted to the BDS course in the respective colleges, come under the “care of” the colleges, the Bench said that the colleges had not approached the court with “clean hands” as they used these students only to fill up some of the unfilled seats indirectly by using the present litigation.
It held that the colleges had not only wasted the time of the court and the petitioner-students, but also unnecessarily driven the KEA and other statutory authorities to the courts forcing them to incur expenses on an unnecessary litigation.
