The Supreme Court on Friday called upon the Centre to assist the Indian students who had returned to the country from Ukraine in view of the war with Russia. The SC suggested that the Centre may create a web portal giving details of the foreign universities where they could complete their courses as per the academic mobility programme.
A bench of Justices Hemant Gupta and Sudhanshu Dhulia said there should be a transparent system and the web portal should specify complete details of the fees and the number of seats available in the alternative foreign universities from where they could complete their courses.
At the outset, Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, appearing for the Centre said he is not taking an adversarial stand and sought time to get instruction from the Government on the suggestions of the bench. The bench posted the matter for hearing on September 23.
The top court was hearing a batch of petitions filed by students, who are undergraduate medical students of first to fourth-year batches in their respective foreign medical colleges/universities, who are primarily seeking transfer to medical colleges in India in their respective semesters.
The Centre, in its affidavit filed on Thursday, said they (students) cannot be accommodated in medical colleges here for lack of provisions under the law and till now, no permission has been given by the National Medical Commission (NMC) to transfer or accommodate any foreign medical students in any Indian medical institute.
It, however, had said to aid and assist such returnee students who could not complete their MBBS courses in Ukraine, the NMC in consultation with the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) has issued a Public Notice dated September 6, 2022 (academic mobility programme), indicating that NMC would accept completion of their remaining courses in other countries (with the approval of parent university/institution in Ukraine).