{"id":3224,"date":"2025-07-09T11:13:19","date_gmt":"2025-07-09T05:43:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/xpertslegal.com\/blog\/?p=3224"},"modified":"2025-07-10T15:18:22","modified_gmt":"2025-07-10T09:48:22","slug":"court-directs-conversion-of-vacant-obc-quota-medical-seat-to-unreserved-category-under-all-india-quota","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/xpertslegal.com\/blog\/court-directs-conversion-of-vacant-obc-quota-medical-seat-to-unreserved-category-under-all-india-quota\/","title":{"rendered":"Court Directs Conversion of Vacant OBC Quota Medical Seat to Unreserved Category Under All India Quota"},"content":{"rendered":"

DR ADITI PANWAR\u00a0 [Petitioner]\u00a0 <\/strong>Vs.\u00a0 <\/strong>NATIONAL BOARD OF EXAMINATIONS IN MEDICAL SCIENCES AND ORS<\/strong>. [Respondents]<\/h1>\n

W.P.(C) 7066\/2025 & CM APPL. 36689\/2025<\/p>\n

(Delivered by TEJAS KARIA, J<\/strong>.)<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The petitioner, a qualified radiologist with 18 years of experience, filed a writ petition seeking a direction for the allotment of a vacant DNB PDCET (Radio-Diagnosis) seat at a government hospital (Respondent No. 3) reserved for the OBC category. The petitioner, who had completed MBBS and PG Diploma in Radiology from government institutions and ranked 142 in the unreserved category in the DNB PDCET 2025, had given the said hospital as her first preference during counselling. She expected the OBC seat to be converted to unreserved if left vacant.<\/p>\n

In the first round of counselling, the seat remained unclaimed by any OBC candidate, yet the petitioner was allotted a seat at a private institution (IVY Hospital), which she declined, given her preference for government institutions. She subsequently represented to the National Board of Examinations in Medical Sciences (NBEMS), requesting allocation of the vacant OBC seat at the government hospital.<\/p>\n

NBEMS initially contended that as per Clause 4.6 of its counselling handbook, it had no authority to convert reserved seats and that such decisions fall under the purview of the state or central government. In response, the Court impleaded the State of Haryana to clarify the matter. On 29.05.2025, the State submitted that the competent authority would decide on the seat conversion within one week.<\/p>\n

Subsequently, the State of Haryana clarified through a letter dated 04.06.2025 that the concerned seat was part of the All India Quota (Central Pool), not the state reservation roster. Therefore, the authority to decide on seat conversion lay with the NBEMS. This communication was supported by additional documentation from Haryana\u2019s Directorate of Health Services and a policy note from the Union of India, which explicitly stated that unclaimed OBC seats under the All India Quota may be converted to unreserved (UR) to avoid wastage.<\/p>\n

The petitioner highlighted this policy and argued that the seat should have been de-reserved and offered in the second counselling round, especially since the counselling process for DNB PD 2025 was ongoing and not concluded. The Union of India also requested NBEMS to take necessary steps to comply with the Court’s previous order.<\/p>\n

Despite this, NBEMS reiterated that under its counselling guidelines and the minutes of its 15th Accreditation Committee meeting, unfilled DNB PD seats should be converted to post-MBBS seats for future counselling. However, this guideline did not apply in the present case since the counselling for DNB PD 2025 was still active, and the seat conversion policy clearly allowed unclaimed OBC seats to be shifted to the UR category.<\/p>\n

The Court observed that the issue was not about conversion between two reserved categories but about converting a reserved seat to UR due to the lack of eligible candidates. It held that Clause 4.6 and NBEMS\u2019s meeting minutes did not preclude such conversion under these circumstances.<\/p>\n

Accordingly, the Court allowed the petition, directing NBEMS to convert the vacant OBC seat at Respondent No. 3 Hospital to the unreserved category and to conduct counselling for all eligible candidates who had indicated preference for the seat in either round. All pending applications were disposed of, and the scheduled date of 16.07.2025 was cancelled.<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

DR ADITI PANWAR\u00a0 [Petitioner]\u00a0 Vs.\u00a0 NATIONAL BOARD OF EXAMINATIONS IN MEDICAL SCIENCES AND ORS. [Respondents] W.P.(C) 7066\/2025 & CM APPL. 36689\/2025 (Delivered by TEJAS KARIA, J.)   The petitioner, a qualified radiologist with 18 years of experience, filed a writ petition seeking a direction for the allotment of a vacant DNB PDCET (Radio-Diagnosis) seat at […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3226,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3224","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-judgement"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/xpertslegal.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3224","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/xpertslegal.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/xpertslegal.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xpertslegal.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xpertslegal.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3224"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/xpertslegal.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3224\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3272,"href":"https:\/\/xpertslegal.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3224\/revisions\/3272"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xpertslegal.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3226"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/xpertslegal.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3224"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xpertslegal.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3224"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xpertslegal.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3224"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}