End of road for PG medical aspirants after SC dismisses their plea

NAGPUR: It’s the end of the road for postgraduate medical aspirant after Supreme Court on Monday rejected their plea challenging Maharashtra government’s ordinance for 16% seats under SEBC quota for Maratha students.
A division bench of justices Sanjiv Khanna and Bhushan Gavai dismissed the plea on maintainability, pointing out that the SC had already ruled that no court would hear any case in this regard. The judges also clarified that admissions for all seats are already completed and there’s no point in disrupting the entire schedule at this stage, which would cause big inconvenience for the students and parents.
While refusing to hear any of their contentions, the judges advised the petitioners to wait for Bombay high court verdict where Maratha reservation in education and jobs is under the challenge. If HC’s principal bench quashes government’s move to implement 16% Maratha quota, all admissions made under it would be automatically cancelled.
The judges further pointed out that same petitioners were approaching the judiciary despite thousands of them applying for the admissions. Even they had secured admissions in the colleges, so no grievances are left, they said.
The petitioners — Dr Sagar Sarda, Dr Sameer Deshmukh and other PG aspirants — knocked the apex court’s doors after their plea challenging ‘Maharashtra State Reservation (of seats for admission in educational institutions and for appointments in the public services and posts under the state) for Socially and Educationally Backward Classes (Amendment and Validation) Ordinance, 2019’, was rejected by the Nagpur bench of Bombay High Court on June 13. It was promulgated by the state to supersede HC’s and SC’s verdicts that had quashed the SEBC quota for PG medical seats in state.
In last hearing on Wednesday, the division bench comprising justices Deepak Gupta and Surya Kant directed the government to reply on Special Leave Petition (SLP) by the aggrieved students.
Pleading for the students, senior counsels — Shekhar Naphade and Meenakshi Arora, assisted by Hrishikesh Chitale and Ashwin Deshpande — contended that HC refused to hear their plea due to SC’s orders of June 4 where it had prohibited all courts from hearing any case related to this vexed issue.
Terming the ordinance as contrary to the law laid down by top court, they further argued that the ordinance is clearly an attempt to nullify the HC’s May 2 judgment that was later upheld by the SC. It is also an effort to circumvent the apex court’s directives that amounts to interfering with its order. They were been prejudiced by the ordinance of illegally applying reservation and thus depriving them of benefit of the HC and SC orders, they said.