On December 16, the Supreme Court's division bench of Justice BR Gavai and Justice Vikram Nath allowed the Pharmacy Council of India's (PCI) application for permission to consider applications for the establishment of new pharmacy colleges for the next academic year 2023-24.
Tushar Mehta, Solicitor General of India, appeared for PCI.

The application in question sought an extension in the time schedule laid down by the Supreme Court via its judgment dated 13.12.2012 wherein a time schedule for the approval process of institutions, grant of admission, and completion of the admission process was laid down. According to the decision, the last date for the authorities to grant or refuse approval was not to be later than the 10th of April of the relevant year, and any appeals, if any, were to be submitted by the 30th of April of the relevant year.

While stating that the applicant was constrained by limited resources and that the number of applications that needed to be processed and disposed of was large, the application also stated that several holidays fell in the month of October, such as Dussehra, Diwali, bhai dooj, Govardhan Puja, and so on. As a result, the applicant stated that the number of working days had been reduced. Thus, there were issues with human resource availability, such as difficulties in locating inspectors, officers in the PCI office, and the closure of other institutions due to festivals, among other things. The applicant also stated that in October 2022, the PCI online portal was blocked, preventing the applicant from carrying out any work related to application processing because all documents related to institutions were only available on the portal in digital form.

According to the applicant, because the portal was down, all work had to be done manually and with a limited number of employees. This was taking a long time, and it was impossible to hire trained personnel in such a short period of time for the completion of application approval for the academic year 2022-23.

Correspondingly, considering the imperatives and extraordinary situation, PCI demanded to be permitted to process the pending applications for the next academic year that is, 2023-2024.

Case Title: Parshavanath Charitable Trust & Anr. V. All India Council For Tech. Education & Ors.
Citation: Miscellaneous Application No. 2174/2022 in C.A. No. 9048/2012
Link: 

https://main.sci.gov.in/supremecourt/2022/41013/41013_2022_9_24_40637_Order_16-Dec-2022.pdf