Tamil Nadu government moves Madras HC for 85 per cent quota in MBBS admissions

Chennai: Tamil Nadu government has filed an appeal before Madras high court, challenging an order of a single judge, which quashed its order, earmarking 85 per cent of the seats available in the state quota to students of Tamil Nadu State Board and the remaining 15 per cent to students of CBSE and other boards for admission to MBBS/BDS courses for academic year 2017-18.

In its appeal, the state government contended that the single judge ought to have considered that even though Neet was common for all students of various boards, the question paper has been prepared by CBSE and all questions in Neet has been taken from CBSE syllabus and only around 50 per cent of questions has been covered in the syllabus of TN state board and therefore, there was an advantage to CBSE students. In order to harmonize the disparity between the students of the different board, the government has no other alternative, but to take a policy in the said matter, it added.

The government said students who studied stat-e board and those who did CBSE board were not equals. Hence, unequals cannot be treated as equals as per Article 14 of the Constitution. To ensure equal opportunity to students of varying boards, normalization has been followed till now under the TN Admission in Professional Educational Institution Act.

The single judge ought to have considered that the state has been empowered to lay down policy to protect its students for admission under the state government seats for MBBS/BDS courses by way of issuing executive orders, since there was a different methodology followed in the teaching understanding, evaluation etc in between the state board and the CBSE board, the government of TN was having the bounden duty to protect the welfare of the students who studied in the state board and therefore, decided to take a policy decision to protect the said students. Accordingly, the government issued an executive order, it added.