The Hindu : SC declines to stay judgment on quota for rural students

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Saturday, Apr 20, 2002

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SC declines to stay judgment on quota for rural students

By Our Legal Correspondent

NEW DELHI April 19. The Supreme Court today declined to stay the operation of a Madras High Court judgment quashing a Tamil Nadu G.O. providing for 25 per cent reservation for rural students in admission to professional courses in the State.

A Bench, comprising Justices S. Rajendra Babu and B.N. Agrawal, however, said that the students who were admitted pursuant to the G.O. could continue their studies. The Bench, while admitting a special leave petition (SLP) from the State Government, issued notice to all petitioner-respondents who had challenged the G.O. in the High Court. Senior counsel for Tamil Nadu, K.K. Venugopal, submitted that if the High Court order was implemented, the existing students would have to be replaced or 177 additional seats would have to be created to accommodate the petitioner/respondents and sought stay of the operation of the impugned judgment.

The then DMK Government had passed a G.O. to provide for 15 per cent reservation of seats for rural students in admission to medical and engineering courses, and this was in vogue for a couple of years. After the AIADMK came to power last year, the Government increased the quota from 15 to 25 per cent and extended the benefit of reservation to the law course also.

A batch of writ petitions were filed in the High Court challenging the G.O. and a Full Bench, by its judgment dated February 5, quashed the G.O. The SLP was directed against this judgment. In its SLP, the Tamil Nadu Government submitted that the horizontal reservation (to rural students) was intended to protect the underprivileged class who could not be treated on a par with the more privileged class of students from urban schools.

The State government contended that the Full Bench of the High Court had failed to note that the classification made was real and substantial and also based on social and educational backwardness of the students who studied in village panchayats. The directions given by the High Court to create additional seats and fill them up was wholly inconsistent with a judgment of the apex court in Rajiv Kapoor's case, the SLP said, and prayed for quashing the impugned judgment.

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