The Madras High Court on Thursday upheld the constitutional validity of a State law passed in October 2020 to provide 7.5% horizontal reservation to NEET-qualified government school students in the admission to undergraduate medical courses. It held that government school students belonged to a “socially and educationally backward class” and therefore the reservation made in their favour was well within the powers of the State legislature.
But Chief Justice Munishwar Nath Bhandari and Justice D. Bharatha Chakravarthy directed the government to review the Tamil Nadu Admission to Undergraduate Courses in Medicine, Dentistry, Indian Medicine and Homeopathy on Preferential Basis to Students of Government Schools Act, 2020, after five years as recommended by a commission headed by retired Madras High Court judge P. Kalaiyarasan. The first Division Bench also directed the State to improve the standard of education in the government schools during the interregnum, so that a need does not arise for extending the reservation beyond the stipulated period of five years. It dismissed writ petitions filed by private school students challenging the validity of the 2020 law.
The judges concurred with the submissions by senior counsel Kapil Sibal, Advocate-General R. Shunmugasundaram, senior counsel P. Wilson and Additional Advocate-General Amit Anand Tiwari, all representing the State, that the law in no way offended private school students’ right to equality under Article 14 of the Constitution and the “positive discrimination” by the State was justified.
Authoring the verdict, Justice Chakravarthy placed on record the court’s empathy with the writ petitioners who had put in hard work to realise be in the reckoning towards realizing their dream of becoming doctors but complained of not being able to make it because of the special reservation provided to government school students. “At the same time, the petitioners have to take this in the right spirit,” he advised.
Striking an analogy with those lining up on the start line for participating in a running race, he said, “If some participant has a difficulty, we should allow this person to start at some distance ahead (vertical reservation) or take him along with us (horizontal reservation) and should not say ‘get out if you can’t run like me.’ After all, the Supreme Court says human sympathies are also part of merit.”
The Bench pointed out that The Justice P. Kalaiyarasan Commission had taken into account multiple factors, including caste, wealth, parental education, parental income, parental occupation, gender, living standards, psychological factor, medium of instruction, location of school and non-availability of private coaching, before concluding that the government school students were at a disadvantage.
The average annual income of the parents of a government school student was ₹46,686, while that of a CBSE student was ₹4.69 lakh and an ICSE student was ₹4.77 lakh. Data also showed that 83% of fathers and 65% of mothers of government school students were daily wage labourers. “These hard facts are the reality, and they cannot be brushed aside while determining equality,” the Bench observed.
The judges also rejected the argument that the State law goes against the Centre’s decision to make medical admissions only on the basis of merit through the National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test (NEET). “We are afraid that we cannot accept the said contention. The legislation does not dispense with or in any manner dilute the mandatory nature of NEET or the minimum qualifying marks which are required to be scored by the students,” they said.
The Division Bench further dismissed another batch of cases filed by government aided private schools challenging the legislation on the ground that it ought not to have secluded their students from the purview of the horizontal reservation. The court pointed out that the commission itself had found that the government aided school students were placed in a better position than the government school students.
