The Madras High Court Bench here on Monday sought the response of the State government to a public interest litigation petition seeking a direction to reserve adequate number of seats in MBBS admissions every year for students passing out of government higher secondary schools.
A Division Bench of Justices A. Selvam and N. Authinathan directed Special Government Pleader M. Govindan to take notice on behalf of the Chief Secretary and the Health Secretary, and ordered the High Court Registry to issue notice to the Vice-Chancellor of Tamil Nadu Dr. MGR Medical University returnable by April 11.
D. Raju, an activist from Ramanathapuram district, had filed the PIL petition. He claimed that information obtained under the Right to Information Act, 2005 revealed that out of the 35,357 MBBS seats filled between the academic years 2009-10 and 2016-17, only 278 seats were bagged by government school students.
“This information was really shocking and pained me a lot,” the petitioner said, and wondered why the government school students were unable to compete with those passing out of private schools, especially when the State was spending a huge amount of public money on improving school education and paying salaries to the teachers.
Stressing the need for the government to take a serious note of the disparity between coaching provided to students studying in government schools and others, the petitioner also sought an interim direction to the State to constitute an expert committee to study the situation in detail and come out with remedial measures.
The petitioner’s counsel pointed out that children from economically weaker sections of society alone studied in government schools since they could not afford to pay the fees charged by private schools. He feared that those children would never be able to become doctors if the situation continued.
