In a relief to Overseas Citizens of India (OCI) students, the Karnataka High Court on Thursday directed the State government to accept their applications to appear for the common entrance test (CET) to be held for selection of candidates for admission to undergraduate engineering courses this year.
Justice B.V. Nagarathna passed the interim order after hearing petitions filed by Sujit Virupaksha and a few other OCI students, who questioned Rule 5 of the Karnataka Selection of Candidates for Admission to Government Seats in Professional Educational Institutions Rules, 2006, which restricts admission only to Indian citizens.
As the Karnataka Examinations Authority’s (KEA) online system does not accept applications of non-Indian citizens, the court permitted the petitioners to submit the hard copy of their application forms to the KEA on or before February 26, which is the last date for admission.
Interim order
However, the interim order applies only for OCI students, who have approached court.
Prima facie, the court said, there is a considerable force in the challenge made to Rule 5 as Parliament had exercised its power under Article 11 of the Constitution (to regulate right of citizenship by law) by amending the Citizenship Act to extend expression of citizenship to include OCIs.
The object of amending the Citizenship Act appears to be to confer rights to the OCIs as are available to Indian citizens, except certain rights defined under Section 7B(2) of the Act, the court observed.
The court also noticed that the Union government itself has permitted OCI student to appear for the National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test-2018, and the State government had not assailed the interim orders passed by High Court last year allowing admission of OCI students to various professional courses.
