Reservation cannot derail elevation of OBC students, Madras High Court tells Puducherry govt

CHENNAI: “The reservation policy should not derail the upliftment of students from the backward community,” opined the Madras High Court, as no seats were granted to Other Backward Caste (OBC) community for the two consecutive academic years in the Indira Gandhi Medical College and Research Institute, Puducherry.

Despite 11% reservation, OBC students were unable to access it due to the arithmetical approximation carried out by the institution, observed Justice M Dhandapani, who directed the Puducherry government to revisit the reservation policy.

“Since the intention of the policy is to uplift the persons from backwardness, not providing seats to OBC students not only defeats the purpose for which reservation has been granted, but also a clear infraction of Article 14 of the Constitution,” wrote the judge. “This is a fallacy of the policy as OBC students could not get a seat, which is very much against the equality enshrined in the Constitution.”

However, the judge refused to grant relief sought by the petitioner as the matter was within the framework of the policy decision of the Union government.

The petition was moved by Katta Bhavya Sree from Yanam seeking to direct the Puducherry government to grant her MBBS seat under the OBC quota in Indira Gandhi Medical College and Research Institute. She claimed that the institute had erroneously granted a MBBS seat to an applicant from MBC category, which was illegal and unconstitutional, hence sought to quash the seat allotment.

According to her, Yanam region is granted 4% of seats allotted to the Puducherry Union Territory. “Since MBC (18) and OBC (11) categories share 29% reservation, one MBBS seat should be granted to that category on rotational basis, every academic year,” said the petitioner.

The institution had granted the MBBS seat to a MBC candidate in the previous academic year. Hence this year, she submitted that the MBBS seat should be granted to the OBC category, particularly to her, as she had secured high rank in counselling.

As a counter, the Puducherry government submitted that on the basis of the reservation, while 0.44 of the seat is given to OBC, 00.72 of a seat is given to MBC and rounding off the same, OBC is provided only with 0.5 seat, while MBC is provided with 1 seat, hence the seat was granted to MBC candidate.