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| Monday, July 23, 2007
Moving ahead in confusion
Fresh Government orders, interim court rulings and injunctions…
the admission process for professional courses is witnessing
many legal battles.
If it is admission time to professional colleges in the State,
the court-loving litigants get ready to file a slew of cases.
They raise fundamental issues to the admission process.
Even after the commencement of the counselling for admissions,
both the Madras High Court and the Supreme Court have been flooded
with appeals from all sides. The net result — students
and parents have been further confused about their future. F
resh orders, interim rulings and stay orders from the top courts
have had an impact on the process of allocation of seats in
engineering and medical colleges. The cases were filed, to start
with, by a consortium of private self-financing colleges, and
students who failed to get admission or cards calling them for
counselling.
The State Government appealed against one ruling, while the
other side approached the Supreme Court for redress. Only a
battle has been won, the war goes on.
What were the issues that took them to the courts? The private
colleges challenged the Government Order that presumed a surrender
of 65 per cent of seats by them to the Government quota for
the Single Window System of Anna University. They submitted
it was an agreement for the last education year and not valid
for the coming academic year. The apex court ruled that based
on its earlier judgments, there was no basis to demand private
colleges to surrender any percentage of seats, unless there
was a specific agreement to do so. The consortium therefore
won a battle and went on to win around the court ruling in its
favour to reject the Government’s move to insist on a
Single Window System of admissions.
Medical colleges
Then came the question of admission to medical colleges. A new
Government order had amended a clause in the prospectus to allow
students who had joined other professional courses to seek admission
this year in medical colleges. Aggrieved students, who passed
out of Plus-Two this year, challenged it in the High Court on
the ground that it would deny them a seat. Seniors had passed
Plus- Two under the old syllabus and could not therefore be
considered on a par with them when admission was only on the
basis of Plus-Two marks, they contended.
The High Court, after threatening to stop the counselling process
that had just begun, was satisfied with the Government’s
offer to withdraw the new clause and resume counselling based
on last year’s guidelines.
But the students from previous years challenged this in the
Supreme Court and have won their battle. An apex court Bench,
headed by Chief Justice K.G. Balakrishnan, observed: “Everybody
has got a right to get admission in a government medical college.
For some reason they might have joined a private medical college
last year. How can you deny their right? There is huge disparity
in the fees in government medical college and private medical
colleges. Can you deprive their chances of admission in a government
college?”
Unfortunately, the first phase of counselling for medical seats
is over and the second phase begins next week. These students
from previous batches would have lost the better colleges and
seats because they can participate only in the second phase.
What does it mean to them?
Law colleges
If medical and engineering courses were not enough, even the
Law college admissions attracted a legal battle.
The High Court struck down a Government order doing away with
a CET for admissions to Law College as students from different
branches of undergraduate courses sought admission and could
not be treated on a par merely on the basis of their marks.
It ordered the Government to hold a CET. But the Supreme Court
stayed that order and upheld the State Government’s appeal
against the High Court ruling as the State had taken a policy
decision to scrap the CET for admission to all professional
courses. So admissions will be on the basis of marks obtained
alone, and from different branches of study.
Academics and students alike feel totally helpless in the face
of such confusion. All this when admissions have already begun.
Courtesy: The Hindu - Education Plus
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