Supreme Court notice to Tamil Nadu on plea against 69 per cent reservation

New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Monday sought the response of the Tamil Nadu government on a writ petition filed by affected students challenging the constitutional validity of the 69 per cent quota in educational institutions in Tamil Nadu.

A Bench of Justices Dipak Misra and Prafulla C. Pant while entertaining the petition filed by Ms Lokeswari and five others asked their counsel Siva Balamurugan to hand over copies of the petition to the counsel for TN and directed the matter to be listed for further hearing on August 17.

The petitioners who sought admission on the basis of their rank in the higher secondary examination said they come well within the cut off mark required for 50% of the total seats available for admission to government medical colleges, as originally announced.

Total seats available in government medical colleges in Tamil Nadu are 2,257 and out of the same if 50% Reservation is followed, it accounts upto Rank No. 1,128 in government colleges.

The petitioners are entitled to get admitted in the government seats as per their rank, but they are not admitted due to 69% reservation in the state.

They said “the conduct of the State of Tamil Nadu having exceeded the quantitative restriction of 50% reservation and the failure to identify creamy layer among the backward classes in alone resulted in a constitutional injury to the citizens against the constitutional mandate, thereby denying meritorious students to get admission to professional college in accordance with the Constitution.”

The petitioners sought to quash the quota and demanded they be admitted by creating extra seats as was being done for the last two decades.