New Delhi: In a huge blow to meritorious students affected by 69 per cent reservation in Tamil Nadu, the Supreme Court on Wednesday refused to pass an interim order to create extra seats in medicine to enable those affected by the quota to get admissions.
A Bench of Justices Arun Misra and Abdul Nazeer hearing application on behalf of two students told senior counsel K.M. Vijayan that creating extra seats is impermissible in law. "We are not for judicial adventures even if this court had passed such orders earlier", Justice Misra added.
When Mr Vijayan submitted that the apex court has been passing such interim orders for the last 25 years without testing the validity of the 69 per cent quota law passed in 1994, Justice Misra said "even if such orders had been passed by this court earlier, we are not going to do that. Such orders to create extra seats should not have been passed by this court."
Justice Misra said, "The question here is whether we can create extra seats. We can't create even a single seat, as this will be against the mandate of the Medical Council of India. Even if the state agrees for it, we can't do that. We can only consider whether the quota can be restricted to 50 per cent as per the 1992 (Mandal) judgment.
Justice Nazeer added, "When the infrastructure in a medical college is for a particular number seats, how can we direct creation of extra
seats." Seeking admission, the petitioners said they come well within the cut off mark required for 50 per cent of the total seats available for admission to Medical College in the Government College In the overall merit list without taking into consideration the students who did not join the course due to various reasons and the number of seats available under surrender seats in the all India quota, all the students who prima facie come within the quantitative restriction of 50 per cent are entitled to be admitted to the medical college.
