The Madras High Court on Friday reserved its judgment on a writ appeal preferred by the State government against a single judge’s order declaring as illegal two government orders issued on March 9 and 23 with respect to classification of work places of government doctors as remote and hilly areas and consequently giving preference to them in postgraduate admissions.
A Division Bench of Justices V. Parthiban and P.D. Audikesavalu deferred their verdict after hearing marathon arguments advanced till 7 pm by a battery of lawyers, including Additional Advocate General C. Manishankar representing the government and senior counsel P. Wilson, Nalini Chidambaram and advocate G. Sankaran representing the candidates.
At the fag end of the arguments, Ms. Chidambaram brought to the notice of the court that her client had filed a case in the Supreme Court too to ensure that the government did not give undue weightage to medical officers in government service in PG admissions much to the disadvantage of private doctors who would otherwise get seats on merit.
She said that her client had planned to file an additional affidavit in the apex court stating that another Division Bench of the High Court had heard the State government’s writ appeal last week and stated that it would dismiss the appeal. Nevertheless, to his surprise the appeal had got listed once again for hearing before the present Division Bench, she added.
However, after perusing the docket of the case bundles, the judges pointed out that there was no such mention by the previous Division Bench, which had simply adjourned the hearing by a week.
Immediately, the AAG told the court that Ms. Chidambaram’s client might have gone by wrong news reports carried in the media regarding orders having been reserved in the case.
To this, she said that her client was present in the court last week and he was witness to the judges having said that they would dismiss the appeal.
But the judges said that it would not be wise to go by the statement of a litigant when so many advocates had conducted the case and the docket did not show any sign of the previous Bench having made any such an observation.
