Holding that the Raja Muthiah Medical College is a constituent college of the State-run Annamalai University, Chidambaram, the Madras High Court has directed the university to act as per the Supreme Court’s interim orders in the communal reservation case in the admission of a forward community candidate for 2014-15.
Justice V. Ramasubramanian, allowing a writ petition, said that if the petitioner could have secured a seat had communal reservation been kept at 50 per cent, he should be admitted by creating an additional seat.
K.Vaithi Viswanath, represented by his mother Kavitha Kasiraja of Kilpauk here, said he secured 197.50 marks out of 200 in the Plus-Two examination of the subjects relevant for the MBBS admission. He applied for admission in the Raja Muthiah Medical College. His rank was 287 in the order of merit. A total of 223 persons above him were absent on the counselling date. Consequently, he was within the first 75 candidates. Since the university applied the 69 per cent reservation, the person who secured the 247 rank became the last person admitted under the open category.
In the Indra Sawhney case, the Supreme Court held that communal reservation should not exceed 50 per cent. However, Tamil Nadu enacted an Act in 1994, providing for 69 per cent reservation and included it in the IX Schedule of the Constitution. When the validity of the Act was challenged by Voice (Consumer Care) Council in the Supreme Court and during the pendency of the petition, interim orders were passed year after year directing the State to create extra seats to accommodate those meritorious candidates. The petition was disposed of by the Supreme Court in 2010.
As the Supreme Court order was not implemented, another set of persons filed a fresh petition before the Supreme Court which by interim orders directed the government to create additional seats as had been done in the past 20 years.
The judge said the university should pass appropriate orders within a week.
