Madras High Court upholds validity of 7.5% reservation for govt. school students in medical admissions

Orders that the quality of education imparted in schools should be improved within five years

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 students who pass out of government schools and clear the National Entrance-cum-Eligibility Test (NEET), in medical admissions.

First Division Bench of Chief Justice Munishwar Nath Bhandari and Justice D. Bharatha Chakravarthy ruled so while dealing with a batch of cases challenging the constitutional validity of the law passed during the AIADMK regime and backed strongly by the incumbent DMK government.

Since the law itself had been passed only for a period of five years subject to review thereafter, the judges directed the government to improve the standard of education imparted in the government schools on a par with that of private schools so that there was no unequal competition.

In his written submissions before the Bench, senior counsel P. Wilson, representing the Higher Education Department, contended that the law was only a preferential source of admission to government seats in medical colleges and could not be termed as reservation per se.

He said the government and private schools were two sources of admission to medical colleges and, of them, one source was given preference to the extent of 7.5%

Contending that the State was empowered to categorise the sources of admission and provide preferential admission to one source, he said such categorisation was based on an intelligible differentia, which had a close nexus to the object sought to be achieved by ensuring that the government school students did not lag behind.