The Madras High Court on Monday ruled that there was no constitutional or legal impediment to extending the benefit of reservation to Other Backward Classes (OBCs) in medical and dental seats contributed to the All India Quota (AIQ) by State government-run medical and dental colleges every year.
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Chief Justice Amreshwar Pratap Sahi and Justice Senthilkumar Ramamoorthy rejected the contention of the Medical Council of India that AIQ in non-central institutions was created at the instance of the Supreme Court in 1984, and hence only the latter could order OBC reservation under that quota.
The verdict was delivered on a batch of writ petitions filed by the Government of Tamil Nadu and a host of parties, including the AIADMK and the DMK, seeking 50% reservation for OBCs in 15% of undergraduate and 50% of postgraduate seats under AIQ in government-run colleges.
The judges directed the Centre to constitute a committee to fix the percentage and other terms for OBC reservation from next year.
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The court did not want to disturb the admission process this year.
Listing the reasons for not accepting MCI’s contention, the Division Bench said the objective behind the Supreme Court’s 1984 order was that there should be a national pool of medical seats filled purely on the basis of merit, instead of every State admitting students to medical colleges on the basis of domicile.
However, that order had been modified from time to time by the Supreme Court itself which, in 2007, ordered grant of reservation for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes. Further, the Centre too had passed a law in 2006 and began providing 27% reservation for OBCs as well in medical and dental colleges run by the Centre.
Therefore, not finding any reason for denying such reservation for OBCs in non-central institutions alone, the Bench said the issue of merit had now been taken care of with the introduction of the National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test (NEET) and the imposition of a stipulation that only those who clear it would be entitled to reservation.
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Authoring the verdict, the Chief Justice said the stand taken by the MCI was also not in consonance with a counter-affidavit filed by the Centre, which had expressed its willingness to provide even “State specific” reservation for OBCs, with a rider that the overall reservation should not exceed 50% of AIQ seats in non-central institutions.
The Division Bench also pointed out that Union Health Minister Harsh Vardhan, in a letter to DMK Rajya Sabha member P. Wilson on December 18, 2019, had said that State governments would be at liberty to frame special provisions by law to provide reservation for SCs, STs and OBCs with respect to seats contributed to AIQ.
In so far as Tamil Nadu was concerned, it already had a law in force. The Tamil Nadu Backward Classes, Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Reservation of Seats in Educational Institutions and of appointments or posts in the Services under the State) Act of 1993 provides for 50% reservation for OBCs, 18% for SCs and 1% for STs.
Nevertheless, the dispute was whether the State law, providing as much as 69% of the overall quantum of reservation, could be applied to seats contributed to the AIQ, especially when the Centre had insisted that overall reservation should not exceed 50% of total seats. Further, the Centre’s inclination to grant reservation for OBCs had not crystalised into a legal right.
At the same time, the Centre’s inclination was “not an elusive proposal and rather is a positive indication of a competent legal resolve for implementing the reservation in favour of the OBCs vis-à-vis the UG/PG seats. This stand does not therefore qualify as a mere anticipation and tends to move a step forward for crystallizing a legitimate expectation of reservation,” the Bench said.
