The Madras High Court has vacated its interim order of January this year restraining the Tamil Nadu Public Service Commission from proceeding further with a notification of November 16 last year for direct recruitment of 27 Assistant Medical Officers (Unani).
Passing the order, the First Bench comprising the Acting Chief Justice R.K. Agrawal and Justice M. Sathyanarayanan said no proceedings took place by virtue of the interim order. It was a settled position of law that if the constitutionality of an enactment/legal provision was challenged, there was an initial presumption in favour of the constitutionality.
Originally, M.Palanimuthu, an advocate, filed a public interest litigation petition for quashing a G.O. of the Health and Family Welfare Department of November 28, 2011 amending the ad hoc rules relating to the post of AMO (Unani).
As per the G.O., if no eligible candidate was available for the vacancy reserved for a communal category other than BC for the appointment of AMO, the vacancy should be filled up from among candidates belonging to any of the other communal categories on merit basis. The petitioner said this was against the Tamil Nadu Government’s policy of providing 20 per cent reservation for candidates who had studied in Tamil medium and the communal reservation policy.
The Bench observed that as rightly contended by the vacate stay petitioner, there was no Tamil medium instruction in Unani medicine and it was generally studied by Muslims who were acquainted with Urdu.
