Hyderabad: In a significant ruling, the Hyderabad High Court has made it clear that whenever a state is bifurcated and a native of the combined state chooses one of the two newly-formed states, he cannot be said to be migrating from one state to another, in the strict sense of the term. A division bench comprising Justice V. Ramasubramanian and Justice Anis, while disposing a batch of petitions by students seeking admissions into undergraduate medical courses, held that insofar as TS and AP were concerned, both states existed as a combined state up to June 1, 2014, and, therefore, the question of migration itself may not arise.
The petitioners urged the court to direct the AP government as well as the NTR Health University to treat them as local candidates as per the amended Presidential Order and also grant benefit of reservations to them. The bench noticed that difficulty has arisen with regard to the candidates belonging to backward classes though they have been treated as local candidates in AP, pursuant to the interim direction issued by the Court. But the community certificates produced by them to the effect that they belong either to BC-A, or BC-D, have not been accepted by the respondents.
Tadi Nageswara Rao, counsel for the health varsity, told the Court that whenever a question of migration arose, the question as to whether a candidate could take to the state of migration, his social backwardness had to be considered by the officials of the social welfare departments of both the states. He said that in the three cases present before the High Court the officers concerned found that the petitioners were ineligible for being treated as belonging to BC-A or BC-D.
The bench said, “It is true that a particular caste, which is recognised as a BC or SC or ST in a particular state, need not necessarily be recognised as such in another state. The law is well settled that people cannot carry their social backwardness wherever they go.” The bench found that, “some of the petitioners in these cases were born in the regions which now form part of AP. They have been issued community certificates by the departments concerned in the regions that now form part of AP. Therefore, it is actually a question of a person who was a native of one state, but was brought up in another state, getting back to his own native state. Hence, the principle that one may lose his community status upon migration cannot apply to persons who have valid community certificates issued by the departments concerned in the regions that now form part of AP.”
The bench, directed the respondents to treat the petitioners not only as local candidates, but also as candidates belonging to the respective reserved communities, provided the community certificates produced by them had been issued by a competent authority of the region, that now form part of AP even after bifurcation. The bench said it was needless to state that it will be subject to the regulations that are in force for admissions.
The bench refused to accept the objection raised by counsel for the University that allotments have already been made in the first phase of (web) counselling and that if the whole process is to be re-done, it will result in severe hardship to thousands of candidates. The bench said "It is only the first phase of counselling which is now over. The candidates have not so far been issued with orders of allotment. Moreover, there has been no uniformity on part of the respondents in the matter of acceptance of community certificates produced by the candidates, upon migration. Therefore, the contention that much water has flown under the bridge, loses sight of the fact that there is more water to come under the bridge."
