Prez order doesn’t cover pvt med, dental colleges: Court

The Hyderabad High Court on Saturday reiterated that Article 371D of the Constitution does not apply to post graduate medical and dental management quota seats in private nonminority medical and dental colleges in Telangana state and Andhra Pradesh.

A vacation bench comprising Justice A. Rajasheker Reddy and Justice T. Rajani was dismissing two petitions filed by TS and AP students seeking to declare the prospectus issued by Kaloji Narayana Rao Health University and NTR Health University inviting applications from all over India for admission into PG medical and dental management quota seats in private nonminority medical in the two states India as illegal.

They urged the court to direct the universities to fill up management quota seats with the students of TS and AP in their respective states with the merit obtained in the Neet-2017.

Senior counsel told the court that the students of the two states had no opportunity to compete in the 15 per cent national pool under the Neet admissions in view of Article 371 (D).

He said Paragraph 5 of the Presidential Order 1975 was not relevant as it spoke about institutions under the control of the government. Paragraph 4 provided for the quota under the Article 371(D) in institutions recognised by the government.

As all colleges were recognised by the governments, only the students of the two Telugu states would have the right to seek admissions in non-minority private medical colleges under the management quota, he said.

The bench relied on an earlier observation of another division bench of the High Court, which had pointed out that Article 371 (D) would not applicable to ‘B’ category management seats and dismissed the petitions.