Tamil Nadu - Chennai

New admission policy to achieve `commonness,' High Court told

Special Correspondent

Impugned Act violative of right to equality: counsel

CHENNAI : The Tamil Nadu Government's new admission policy of dispensing with the Common Entrance Test (CET) for the State Board students seeks to achieve "commonness" on the basis of one syllabus, one question paper and uniform evaluation, Additional Advocate-General A.L. Somayaji told the Madras High Court on Thursday.

Continuing his arguments, countering averments made in a batch of petitions against the constitutional validity of the Tamil Nadu Regulation of Admission in Professional Courses Act 2006, Mr. Somayaji said Central Regulations governing Medical and Dental Councils administration did not say that a CET was a must under all circumstances. "It only requires you to have a common evaluation scheme to equalise different standards, so that inter se merit could be protected," he added.

As regards the objective the legislation sought to achieve, the Additional Advocate-General said students from rural areas were at a disadvantage and that many of them could not afford coaching facilities. He said the impugned legislation would definitely uplift the rural students from social and educational backwardness.

Written submissions filed by advocate K. Balu on behalf of a student wing leader of the Pattali Makkal Katchi (PMK) said the stipulations contained in the MCI Regulations on the necessity to hold a CET must be considered overruled by the Supreme Court. According to him, the CET was just one of the methods to assess the inter se merit and admit students to professional courses. Whatever be the method, admission must be merit-based and must satisfy the parameters laid down by the apex court.

Senior counsel K.M. Vijayan, in his written submissions, said the impugned Act was violative of the fundamental right to equality, as it proposed to conduct two different examinations and valuation for two different Boards for the same admission process.

Limited purpose

Describing as "fallacious and irrational" the State's averment that Article 15(5) of the Constitution empowered it to bring about the impugned legislation, Mr. Vijayan said "the provision enables the State Government to pass a law relating to reservation in admission in professional colleges. The Article is only for the limited purpose of providing reservation in private educational institutions and not for abolishing the CET... The language of Article 15(5) by no stretch of imagination can be construed as a source of legislative competence to regulate the admission and abolishing the CET inconsistent with the Central Act," he submitted.

The First Bench, comprising Chief Justice A.P. Shah and Justice Prabha Sridevan, then adjourned the matter to Friday for further hearing.

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