The Madras High Court on Wednesday dismissed writ petitions filed by a group of medical officers in State government service, and serving in areas classified as remote and hilly, seeking a direction to the Centre to reserve 50% of seats for them under the all-India quota in post-graduate diploma courses offered by medical colleges.
Justice S. Vaidyanathan rejected their cases on the ground that no such reservation could be provided to in-service candidates under the all-India quota.
“The demand of the petitioners that there shall be reservation of 50% of seats in PG diploma courses cannot be acceded to... In view of the above, the writ petitions are dismissed,” the judge said. Though the petitioners C. Sudhan, V. Paul Selvan, A. Mohammed Mohaideen, J. Maheshkumar, S. Ravindran, M. Kalai Mano Bharathi and K. Rekha had relied upon Regulations 9(IV) and 9(VIII) of the Post Graduate Medical Education Regulations of 2000 to claim reservations, the judge held that those regulations would not apply to all-India quota.
‘G.O.s illegal’
Allowing another batch of writ petitions filed by government doctors P. Pravin, M. Mahesh, G. Ramesh Kumar and T. Rengaraj, the judge declared as illegal two government orders issued on March 9 and March 23 with respect to classification of the work places of government doctors as remote and hilly areas and thereby giving preference to them in postgraduate admissions.
Disapproving of such a practice, the judge said there had been no proper geographical identification of the work places and the primary health care centres and but for the urban localities, all other areas had been categorised as A, B or C in order to give weightage to in-service candidates in admission to postgraduate admissions much to the disadvantage of meritorious candidates.
“The exercise made by the (government appointed) committee based on which, the Government Orders in question are issued are liable to be interfered with, and hence, both the Government Orders are declared to be illegal.
“The writ petitions are allowed,” the judge concluded.
In their affidavit, the petitioners had contended that there had not been a reasonable classification of the workplaces due to which doctors working in very remote localities were not able to take advantage of the weightage marks in PG admissions.
