Govt restores 50% quota for general students in its residential schools

The state government on Monday filed a memo before the Karnataka High Court stating that it has restored the earlier 50% reservation for students of general merit (GM) category for admission to state-run residential schools.

The memo was submitted in response to a petition filed
by Vishwanath S Mathad and four others - the parents of children seeking admission to state-run residential schools. They had challenged the government circular which reserved all the seats in the state-run residential schools only for students of Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes and OBCs.

The petitioners had questioned the legality of circular dated April 24, 2017, issued by the state government which provided that the students admitted to Morarji Desai, Kittur Rani Chennamma, Atal Bihari Vajpayee and other such residential schools must belong to SC, ST or OBC, and no student from any other category could be admitted in these schools.

In the last hearing, the court had passed an interim order staying the implementation of the circular. Justice A S Bopanna took the memo on record and disposed of the petition.

According to the memo, 50% of the seats at residential schools will be reserved for General Merit category, 25% for Scheduled Castes/Scheduled Tribes and 25% for Other Backward Classes.