Chennai: Decks have been cleared for admission to MBBS/BDS courses with the Madras high court dismissing an appeal and a batch of petitions which sought a direction to the authorities to confine the counseling to students who have passed plus two in the academic year 2014-15.
Holding that examinations conducted by the State Board, irrespective of years, is one and the same, a division bench comprising Justices Satish K Agnihotri and M Venugopal dismissed an appeal filed by Kabhilan and the petitions filed by 65 other students. It however allowed the petitions from 5 students, which opposed the plea of the petitioners (2014-15 batch) to restrain the authorities from considering and admitting students from previous years.
The bench said the contention that less number of students have secured less centum in the current year in the qualifying examination as compared to last year was not a relevant criterion. It was well known that securing of marks depends on several factors viz., question papers, valuers / examiners and other similar factors. If more number of students has secured more marks that by itself cannot be a ground to take a view that the selection on merit would suffer.
“A student chooses a professional career as per his intention, which he has to pursue lifelong. If he fails in one attempt to secure admission to the professional course of his choice, he may not be thrown out at the door for admission in the next year. The object of the TN Admission in Professional Educational Institutions Act seems to be to permit all the candidates who have obtained qualifying examination certificate irrespective of the years of obtaining such certificate. The contention of the petitioners that almost 50 percent of seats would go to the candidate of previous years is not a relevant and rational criterion, when it is the common examination conducted by the State Board. The year of obtaining qualifying examination certificate is irrelevant,” the bench added.
Further, the bench said the students of previous years had every right to compete with the fresh candidates for the desired professional course, when there was no bar under the provisions of the Act and the Prospectus.“The state legislature had enacted the present Act for regulating admission to various professional courses. The constitutional validity of the said Act is not under challenge and as such, we are unable to direct the state government to conduct a common entrance test in lieu of admission to medical and dental courses on the basis of qualifying examination certificate, as defined in the Act”, the bench added.
