A private school student who could not get a government medical college seat, despite scoring 565 out of 720 marks in the National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test (NEET), has challenged the constitutional validity of the 7.5% horizontal reservation for State government school students.
The petitioner, S. Pooja, 19, of Chennai, said the Tamil Nadu Admission to Undergraduate Courses in Medicine, Dentistry, Indian Medicine and Homeopathy on preferential basis to students of Government Schools Act of 2020 promotes mediocrity by reserving medical seats for those who score less in NEET.
Claiming to be hailing from a lower middle-class family, Ms. Pooja said she had been trying to gain a government medical college seat since 2018, when she completed Class XII, scoring 1,113 out of 1,200 marks. But that year, she ended up scoring only 134 marks in NEET.
She scored 420 marks in NEET in 2019, but did not succeed in getting a seat in a government medical college.
This year, she scored 565 marks, but her hopes of getting a seat were dashed when the State government introduced the 7.5% quota.
Stating that she belongs to a Backward Class community, she said it was unfair to reserve seats for government school students, who have scored much less marks than her, in both government and private medical colleges, after the government undertaking to pay their entire expense from the public exchequer.
She contended that the government’s decision was directly repugnant to the objective sought to be achieved by the introduction of NEET. She also claimed that the classification of students, on the basis of the schools where they studied, lacked intelligible differentia, and, hence, was liable to be interfered by the court.
A Division Bench of Justices Vineet Kothari and M.S. Ramesh admitted her writ petition and directed the government to file its counter affidavit by January 5.
The judges said an interim order to reserve a seat until the disposal of the case could not be passed now, since the medical counselling for this year was almost over and a majority of seats had been filled up.
When the petitioner’s counsel, R. Karthikeyan, urged the court to pass an interim order that admissions under the 7.5% quota this year would be subject to the result of the writ petition, the judges refused to do so. “We don’t want to let the sword of Damocles hang over the heads of these poor students,” the senior judge in the Bench said.
Advocate-General Vijay Narayan opposed the grant of any kind of interim order. He said the law was enacted with the avowed objective of providing medical education to deprived sections of the society. Though 41.5% of all students in the State were from government schools, only 0.16% of them were able to get into medical colleges before the enactment.
Concurring with him that there was a laudable objective behind the enactment, the judges said it also reflected the unsatisfactory quality of education provided in government schools. “Why don’t you increase the standard of education in government schools? In the United States, government schools provide better education than private schools,” Justice Kothari said.
Replying to the judge, the A-G told the court that the government was working on those lines as well, and said Tamil Nadu was the first State in the country to bring in a law for reservations for government school students in medical colleges. He hoped that other States would follow suit since it benefits the poor and the deprived.