‘Why defence personnel’s children denied MBBS special reservation?’

A division bench comprising Justice N Kirubakaran and B Pugalendhi, before whom a plea came up in this regard, refused accept the government’s contention that as horizontal reservation system was adopted, many sections have to be benefitting within it. The State also submitted that based on the priority categories given by the Centre, it was not in a position to give seats to the children of serving personnel.

“Though the arguments advanced on behalf of the State appear to be correct, it cannot be a ground for deletion of the category for the children of serving defence personnel from the beneficial Government Order. If they are so conscious about the Centre’s priority categories, they have to incorporate and follow it without deleting the children of the serving defence personnel.”

Posting the plea for further hearing to November 19, the bench sought the central government counsel to get instructions as to whether it was possible to give equal priority to the children of serving defence personnel instead of giving priority in the allocation of seats based on categories so that all the sections would be benefitted.

While seeking statistics pertaining to the reservation accorded in the ex-servicemen category, the bench also sought to know as to why the additional seats have not been given to children of servicemen when the number of seats in medical colleges have been on the rise in the State.

As per the case, a GO was issued in 1979 giving special reservation of six seats in the first year Integrated MBBS Course for the children of ex/deceased/serving defence personnel at the rate of two seats for each category under PUC, BSc quotas. But thereafter, pursuant to the judgement by the High Court in 2002, the GO was deemed to be superseded and a fresh GO issued by the Health and Family Welfare Department in 2004 discontinued the reservation for serving personnel.