Kerala - Kochi

Court stays quota in Government seats

Kochi: The Kerala High Court, on Thursday, stayed the Government Order reserving seats in the Government quota in five self-financing medical colleges for filling them on a merit-cum-means basis. These colleges had signed a seat-sharing agreement with the State.

Justice S. Siri Jagan also stayed until further orders the collection of annual fees by these colleges in the management seats, except those reserved for Non-Resident Indians, under the agreement. The interim order was passed on a batch of writ petitions challenging the economic reservation in Government seats.

The court ordered that these colleges should fill up 15 per cent of the management quota in accordance with the inter-se merit on the basis of the ranks in the list published by the Commissioner for Entrance Examinations. The court made it clear that the candidates who held higher ranks should be preferred to those lower.

The judge said the fees collected from students admitted to the management seats should be those fees fixed by the Fee Regulatory Committee, headed by P.A. Mohammed, and not according to the agreement.

The agreement provided for a fee of Rs. 5.5 lakh a year from students admitted in management seats. The committee had fixed the annual fee at Rs. 1.3 lakh. In fact, the agreement had given the managements the freedom to admit students in 15 per cent of the 50 per cent management seats without referring to the ranks.

The court was of the opinion that when the law prescribed a mode of fixation of fee, the Government and the managements could not collect higher fees by way of an agreement.

Referring to the seat-sharing agreements signed between the Government and the managements, it said that the action taken by the former in this regard could not be faulted.

The court observed that it was admitted that economic reservation was not provided in other medical colleges, even in those run by the Government. As such, the court felt that such reservation would be discriminatory. The court was also satisfied that no law had provided such kind of reservation.

The petitioners, most of them aspiring admission in medical colleges, contended that reserving seats in the Government quota for economically backward students was unconstitutional. They also contended that the clause which permitted 15 per cent seats in management quota to be filled up by the educational agency without referring to the order of ranks was illegal. They argued that the clause which allowed the managements to collect higher fee for the 35 per cent management seats than that prescribed by the Mohammed Committee was unsustainable.

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