Hyderabad: In a major setback to candidates seeking admission to professional courses under the sports quota, the Hyderabad High Court on Friday directed the Telangana state government not to extend the benefit of reservation under the sports quota for the current academic year.
The court said that the staying of admissions under sports quota was a painful option, but this “surgical strike” appears to be the need of the hour.
A division bench comprising Justice V. Ramasubramanian and Justice K. Vijaya Lakshmi, while dealing with a petition by Thalla Shriya and four others seeking admission to medicine, engineering and agriculture courses for the academic year 2018-19, stayed the GO issued on June 21 providing two per cent reservation for sports persons.
The bench pointed out that there were two major flaws in the GO. The first one was the inclusion of sports not heard of at all in this part of the country, and second was the inherent contradiction between para 5 and para 7 of the GO.
Citing the recent probe of the ACB into alleged irregularities in sports quota admissions, the bench observed that “now that the government has woken up to the reality of the sports quota being misused, leading to corrupt practices, we think it would be in the interest of the student community that no admission shall be made to professional courses under the sports quota for the current academic year.”
