CHENNAI: The Madras High Court on Friday struck down the 85 per cent reservation of MBBS & BDS seats for the State Board students as patently illegal. Minutes after, Health Minister C Vijayabaskar announced his government would appeal against the verdict.
Health department officials said they would not start medical admission counselling as per schedule on Monday. Instead, the State government is planning to file an appeal in the High Court on Monday against the order of Justice K Ravichandra Baabu. Medical admissions, hence, would continue to be a muddle at least for the next few weeks.
But the strongly worded order of the Justice K Ravichandra Baabu leaves little space for Tamil Nadu to pick up holes and argue for reprieve. “Merely because CBSE students obtained more marks in NEET than students of State Board, can they be treated with jealous and denied their legitimate right to get admission into the professional courses...
“Certainly, it is impermissible, that too, for the State to adopt such step-motherly treatment to those students from CBSE Board. Are they aliens? Is it their sin in selecting the CBSE Board to qualify themselves in +2?” the judge wondered in the order.
The reservation for the State Board students was created by a government order of the Health Department on June 22. It was an apparent effort to ensure that State Board students, who largely scored poor marks in the National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test (NEET), get adequate representation in State’s medical colleges.
Pointing out to the haste in which the GO was issued on June 22, the court wondered how a policy decision was taken without even a Cabinet discussion. “Certainly, the Additional Director is not competent to take a policy decision and on the other hand, it is the Government, which is competent to do so,” said the order after highlighting how the proposal for the order was made by the Additional Director of Medical Education.
The judge made it very clear that certainly, the court is not against the promotion of interest of the students from rural background, more particularly, those who are studying in State Board. It has every concern for their upliftment. But it can’t happen through illegal means.
SC refuses to nullify common test for not being uniform
The Supreme Court on Friday refused to “nullify” the NEET 2017 exam, saying it would affect over six lakh candidates who have passed the test to join medical and dental courses. The counsel contended that the exam has to be “nullified” and conducted afresh as different question papers in different languages was ‘completely unlawful’.