The Supreme Court has directed AIIMS not to reserve general category medical seats for reserved category students. An order from the court became essential as the premier medical institution had issued a notice during the ongoing counselling inviting reserved OBC candidates to apply against the unreserved seats.
In the name of reservation, the AIIMS even declared that if the reserved candidate vacated the general category seat to opt for a reserved seat, the benefit of that vacancy would go to the next OBC candidate in line and not to any of the general category students. This meant that several general category seats in MBBS and MD courses would covertly be added in the reserved quota.
The matter was reported to the apex court by a NGO Samta Andolan Samiti and also a student who found the notice put up by AIIMS in the first week of July as affecting his right to admission. Initially the apex court directed the Convenor of AIIMS Counseling Committee to allow the student to take part in counseling as it set out to examine the decision of AIIMS to revert general category seats to reserved candidates.
Advocate for the petitioners Ml lahoty and Gopal Shankaranaraynan pointed out to the Court that the matter required to be urgently dealt with since the third round of counseling would commence next week. The Court was informed that already OBC candidates had appeared in counseling and it was likely that with the counseling notice in place, they may claim a right for admission against general seats.
lahoty cited early decisions of the Supreme Court which held that reservation in admissions and jobs cannot exceed 50 per cent of the total seats. later, in Ashoka Kumar Thakur which dealt with 27 per cent OBC quota in IITs, IIMs and central educational institutions, the majority verdict held that vacancies generated in general category cannot be passed to reserved category students. This was done to balance the 50 per cent quota benchmark set by the apex court.
In view of the submissions, the Bench of Justices KS Radhakrishnan and AK Sikri held,“Vacancies which are available in the General category shall not be filled up from other categories for a period of two weeks.” The order came as a blow to AIIMS as it was prevented from admitting SC/ST/OBC candidates against the General pool. The bench posted the matter on September 6 and has directed the AIIMS and Ministry of Health to respond to the petition within a week.
