The hopes of 69 non-resident Indian students in two West Bengal government medical colleges to continue their studies this academic session were dashed as the Supreme Court on Tuesday refused to modify its earlier order scaling down the NRI seats in these colleges from over 100 to 30.

A Bench comprising Justice Y K Sabharwal and Justice P P Naolekar said that though they were not inclined to interfere with its interim order of October 29 but advised the students to take the common entrance test this year.

However, the Bench agreed to consider "sympathetically" the plea of the NRI quota students, who lost their seats on the interim order of the apex Court, for distributing them among the nine government medical colleges in the state for the academic year 2005-06.

Appearing for the NRI students, senior advocates Gopal Subramanyam and Arun Jaitley contended that as these students have studied for four months, they should be allowed to continue as an exception for this year alone.

However, appearing for meritorious students, who qualified through the Common Entrance Test and filled the seats vacated by the NRI students, senior advocate Mukul Rohtagi and advocate Sanjeev Sen stated that if the excess NRI students were allowed to continue, it would be a mockery of apex court's consistent stand that merit should not be compromised.

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