Hyderabad High court slams quota ratio of private minority medical colleges

Hyderabad: The Telangana Government has received a setback with a division bench of the High Court on Monday staying operations of the Government Orders 115, 117 and 119 released by the state’s Medical and Health Department. The orders were meant to change the ratios of category A (convenor quota), B. ( Management Quota) and C. (NRI Quota) for admission to MBBS courses for academic year 2017-18.; and also give a free hand to the unaided minority educational institutions to allot even the unfilled seats to other categories.

The court restrained the respondents from altering the proportion between the said categories from the original ratios fixed by GO 130 issued on Sept 12, 2016. Notices were issued to the respondents to file counter affidavits in 2 weeks.

“ No reason or rhyme is stated in the impugned order for the sudden change of proportion. As a matter of fact , the impugned GO 115 dated July 5, 2017, by which the proportion is changed is followed up by another GO 117 dated July 20 2017, giving a free hand to the unaided minority educational institutions to allot even the unfilled seats to other categories. This is prima facie, contrary to the law laid down by the Supreme Court in a series of Judgements,” the bench said.

The bench of Justice T Rajanai and Justice V Ramasubramanian passed this interim order on a writ petition filed by Basheeruddin Siddqui and 13 other aspirants against the impugned Government orders reports TNIE.

The respondents in the petition have been named as : Special Chief Secretary, Medical, Health and Family Welfare, Director Medical Education, Kaloji Narayana Rao, University of Health Sciences and Deccan College of Medical Sciences.

The counsel of the petitioners, B. Rachna Reddy in her submission revealed that the authorities vide the impugned order had changed the category percentages of A seats to 50 %, thereby lessoning the share and had enhanced the other two categories B and C by changing them to 35% and 15% respectively.

In accordance with GO 130, category A is to have a 60% share of seat while category B and C are to enjoy 25% and 15% respectively, for unaided minority professional medical and dental institutions.. The petitioner argued saying that this change of percentages had acted as a detriment to the interest of the aspirants, who would have otherwise secured seats as per the old division after the declaration of the NEET 2017 results in June this year.

She argued that the impugned orders be set aside in order to protect the interests of the aspiring candidates.

The bench said ,” It appears that until the last academic year (2016-17), the ratio of allotment of seats between categories AB and C in unaided minority professional institutions was 6025 and 15 percent. This is seen from 130. Bit all of a sudden, on a representation purportedly made by one of the institutions(Deccan College), the proportion has been altered to 50 percent for Category A, 35 pc for B and 15 pc for category C seats. The reasons for the above volte face are too obvious to note.” The bench asked the respondents to file a counter petition.

Dr. V Karunakaran, Vice Chancellor, Kaloji Narayana Rao, University of Health Sciences said that in institutions where category B has already been filled,the students would join the college. In cases where vacant seats still existed, conversion to category A, would take place reports TNIE.

“Unlike government and corporate colleges, minority colleges constitute very less percentage of seats and will not impact more than 120 seats,” he said.

The three minority colleges Dr VRK Women’s Medical College, Deccan College of Medical Sciences and Shadan Institute of Medical Sciences together constitute for 400 seats. 2,100seats in private and 1,100 seats in government medical colleges are available in the state of Telangana.