Hyderabad High Court ends Osmania University, SVU medical row

Hyderabad: The Hyderabad High Court has directed the Nizam’s Institute of Medical Sciences (Nims) to consider allocation of seats on a rotation basis, by converting the Andhra University seat to an Osmania University seat every three years in  branches having  four seats.

In branches where eight seats are available,  one seat from Sri Venkateswara University (SVU) is to be converted to an OU  seat every  alternate year, the court said on Friday.

The court found that the method that Nims was following was costing Osmania University a seat every alternate year and SVU gaining one seat, against the spirit and intent of the Presidential Order 1979.

Justice Suresh Kumar Kait was disposing of two petitions, one is seeking a direction to the AP and Telangana state governments  to fill the seats in DM (Neurology) in  Nims under the terms of the Presidential Order, and GOP No 646  dated  10.07.1979,  by  giving  preference to the higher fraction as per the fractional entitlement in proportion to the ratio fixed  in the Presidential  Order and to allot two seats in DM (Neurology) under local area reservation to the SVU.

The other petition sought to declare the action of the Nims in issuing notification for Nimset-SS for the academic year 2016 without indicating the local area reservations, as indicated in the previous notifications, as illegal and arbitrary.

Counsel for the petitioners submitted that in GOP No. 646, local areas of the state of Andhra Pradesh were defined for the purpose of admission into educational institutions.  The local areas of statewide universities are AU, OU and SVU.

In the Presidential Order, the local area seats were distributed in the ratio of 42:36:22 to AU, OU and SVU respectively. The number  of  seats  reserved,  in  aggregate,  in  favour  of  local candidates,  is  in  relation  to  the three  universities. The number shall  be  85 per cent of  available  seats. Any  fraction  of  seats  is counted  as  one,  provided  there is at least one unreserved seat.

The petitioners said that the Andhra University  region had eight districts, Osmania University  10  and  SVU region five districts. Therefore, the fraction 0.52 in OU allocation  cannot  be  counted  lesser than 0.54  in  the  SVU allocation. If only the fraction had to be considered,  0.54 would have been given the preference.

While ordering Nims to adopt rotation basis for allocation of seats, the judge felt that the arrangement ordered by the court would give equitable rights to three varsities and none of the universities would be deprived of their legitimate share.

When some of the aggrieved parties moved the appeal against the single judge order, the division bench refused to intervene and directed the Nims to follow the rotation method.