It was penalised for not filing a fresh application while the very question whether it needed to was pending in court
Justice Jasmeet Singh set aside the Medical Assessment and Rating Board's speaking order, revived the 2025–26 application for 2026–27, and let the Institute into the stray round if a fresh inspection is satisfactory.
A society registered under the West Bengal Societies Registration Act has built a medical institute and hospital at Aishtala, Ranaghat, in Nadia district. On 17 January 2025 it applied under Section 28 of the National Medical Commission Act, 2019 for permission to establish the institute with an annual intake of 100 MBBS seats, enclosing an Essentiality Certificate from the State Government dated the previous day and a Consent of Affiliation from the West Bengal University of Health Sciences of the same date. Two academic years later it still has no Letter of Permission. On 14 October 2026 the Delhi High Court held that the second of those lost years cannot be laid at its door.
The paper trail
A show-cause notice issued on 26 May 2025 asking for documents needed to process the application. The society replied in detail on 30 May 2025 with supporting documents, and the University issued a revised Consent of Affiliation on 11 September 2025 at its request, which was supplied to the Commission and the Board by email on 21 September 2025.
On 13 October 2025 the Medical Assessment and Rating Board issued a Letter of Disapproval under Section 28(3) on two grounds: the alleged absence of a valid Consent of Affiliation, and the alleged absence of ownership of the teaching hospital. A first appeal under Section 28(5) was rejected on 13 November 2025, the stated reason being the lack of a valid Consent of Affiliation, which meant no physical inspection of the college had been carried out — inspection being mandatory for a new medical college.
The society filed a second appeal under Section 28(6) to the Union of India and simultaneously came to this Court. On 18 November 2025 the Court directed the Commission to conduct a physical inspection and place the report before it. The inspection was carried out on 28 November 2025, and the respondents' own report recorded that there were no deficiencies in the Institute.
On 19 December 2025 the respondents disposed of the second appeal, recording that it had become infructuous for the academic year 2025–26 in view of the undergraduate counselling timelines. On 27 January 2026 this Court expressly recorded, in the pending writ petition, that the question whether the earlier application could be considered for 2026–27 would be adjudicated when the matter was heard. On 3 September 2026 that petition was disposed of with directions that the Commission consider the order on the second appeal — that is, follow due process for the academic year 2026–27 — and pass a speaking order, and that the inspection report of 28 November 2025 be considered if required.
The order under challenge
In compliance, the Board passed the impugned order on 14 September 2026. It held that the application submitted in January 2025 cannot be treated as a subsisting application for the academic year 2026–27 in the absence of a fresh application, and that while the inspection report of 28 November 2025 had been duly considered, it cannot be treated as a substitute for the inspection or assessment required in respect of a fresh application for 2026–27. The society was left at liberty to submit a fresh application in accordance with the applicable statutory and regulatory requirements and timelines, to be considered independently.
Mr Anurag Ahluwalia, senior counsel for the petitioners, argued that the order proceeded on a fundamentally incorrect interpretation of the Court's direction of 3 September 2026 and an erroneous construction of the expression “due process for the Academic Year 2026-27” in the order of 19 December 2025, by which the second appeal had been rejected without being decided on merits. He relied on a Patna High Court judgment in which a college's earlier application had been revived in comparable circumstances. Mr Raman Kapur, senior counsel, appeared for the Commission, and Mr Vinay Yadav, Central Government Standing Counsel, with the Government Pleader for the Union.
The circularity
Set out in order, the reasons the Institute has been refused permission form a loop. The Letter of Disapproval of 13 October 2025 rested on the absence of a valid Consent of Affiliation and the absence of ownership of the teaching hospital. The first appeal was rejected on 13 November 2025 for want of a valid Consent of Affiliation — and because that was missing, no physical inspection had been carried out, inspection being mandatory for a new college.
The University had, however, issued a revised Consent of Affiliation on 11 September 2025, and it had been emailed to the Commission and the Board on 21 September 2025, three weeks before the Letter of Disapproval. And the inspection that was said to be impossible without a valid consent was in fact carried out on 28 November 2025 under this Court's direction, and the respondents' own inspectors recorded no deficiencies.
What then disposed of the second appeal on 19 December 2025 was neither of the original grounds but the calendar: the appeal had become infructuous for 2025–26 in view of the undergraduate counselling timelines. And what disposed of the application for 2026–27 in the order of 14 September 2026 was the absence of a fresh application. At no stage has the Institute been told that anything is wrong with its college.
A proviso that did not apply, and a finding that could not stand
The Court dealt first with the regulatory bar the Board had implicitly invoked. There is a provision to the effect that once an application is rejected the eligible entity loses the chance of reapplying until the next window; but it sits in the context of a preceding proviso concerning incomplete applications, and it operates where an application is rejected for want of the documents mandated by the Regulation. That proviso could not apply here, because the revised Consent of Affiliation dated 11 September 2025 had not been considered by the impugned order at all.
The second finding in the impugned order was that the petitioners “wilfully” did not submit a fresh application for the academic year 2026–27 in accordance with the application process notified by the Commission. That was answered by the Court's own record. By the order dated 27 January 2026 the question whether the earlier application could be considered for 2026–27 was pending before the Court and was expressly kept open. “A litigant who awaits the outcome of such adjudication cannot be said to have acted to its detriment by not applying afresh.”
From those two findings the conclusion on proportionality followed. The consequences imposed on the petitioners were disproportionate: the effect of the impugned order is to exclude the Institute from the academic year 2026–27 altogether, and that does not flow from any adverse finding on the merits of the application but from the absence of a subsequent application, the necessity of which was itself the question pending before the Court. In the face of a report by the respondents' own inspectors recording no deficiency, the exclusion of the Institute without a reasoned examination on merits is arbitrary and violative of Article 14 of the Constitution. The order of 14 September 2026 could not be sustained.
What the Court weighed in moulding relief
Two practical considerations shaped the directions. The Institute had already been denied consideration for the previous academic session on account of timelines substantially lost in the hands of the respondents, and in those circumstances there was no justification for requiring it to wait for yet another session. And the Court said it could not be overlooked that the petitioners had incurred huge expenditure in setting up the Institute, including developing infrastructure and paying salaries to its teachers — a matter to be kept in mind while granting relief.
The writ petition was allowed in three directions. The respondents are to treat the earlier application bearing the 2025–26 application number as a valid and subsisting application for the academic year 2026–27. They are at liberty to carry out a fresh inspection of the Institute in accordance with the Act and the Board's Regulations, and must do so keeping in view the counselling timelines for 2026–27. And if after that fresh inspection they find the Institute in order, the petitioners are entitled to participate in the counselling for 2026–27 in the third round — the stray or spot round — or, if that round has concluded, in the next available round, with the respondents to take all consequential steps to ensure it.
The relief is conditional, and deliberately so. The Institute has not been granted a Letter of Permission; it has been granted the right to be assessed for 2026–27 on the application it filed in January 2025, and to take the consequences of that assessment. If the fresh inspection finds deficiencies, the directions give it nothing. What it can no longer be told is that the door is shut because it did not file a second application while the Court was deciding whether a second application was needed.
The petition was disposed of along with pending applications, and the documents handed over in court were taken on record.
The Court's reliance on expenditure already incurred — infrastructure built and salaries paid to teachers — is a reminder of who else is affected by a regulatory stalemate: a hundred seats a year that have not existed for two admission cycles, and a faculty drawing salaries from an institute with no students.
The counselling timelines for 2026–27 are therefore now the operative constraint, and the Court has written them into the direction on inspection.