HYDERABAD: The Kaloji Narayana Rao University of Health Sciences on Tuesday denied that there had been any irregularities in the second phase of counselling, as alleged by petitioners in the Telangana High Court, and claimed it had scrupulously implemented GOs 114 and 550 during the allocation of seats. It said seats vacated by meritorious reserved category candidates were given to respective reserved category candidates in the second phase of counselling for admission into MBBS and BDS courses for the 2019-20 academic year.
“If a meritorious reserved category candidate slides to a seat under the reserved category, a vacated seat in the open category will be converted to reserved category in the same phase,” it explained.
On August 7 this year, the bench stayed the admissions made in the second phase of counselling for the above courses under the 50 per cent competent authority quota and directed the varsity to file a counter-affidavit on the issue.
In this regard, University Registrar D Praveen Kumar filed a counter-affidavit before the division bench comprising Justice PV Sanjay Kumar and Justice P Keshava Rao dealing with the petition filed by N Bhavana and four other students belonging to the SC and BC community.
The Supreme Court, as well as GO 550, say that if a candidate in the reserved category with high marks opts to slide to a college or course of his choice, then the university will have to keep the seat vacated by him in the reserved category. However, the varsity has been finding it difficult to follow this step with respect of subsequent phases of counselling and also while filling seats which have been made vacant due to non-joining of selected candidates.
The registrar, while claiming that no injustice was done to the petitioner students, made it clear that they will not get seats if their marks are below the cut-off mark. He urged the court to vacate the stay order.
The bench posted the matter to Wednesday for hearing the submissions of the petitioners’ counsel to the above affidavit.