HC concludes hearing on vacancies in medical seats

The Hyderabad High Court on Tuesday reserved its orders on a batch of petitions opposing and supporting the GO No. 550 issued by the erstwhile AP government in 2001 to fill up the medical seats vacated by reserved meritorious candidates with candidates of reserved categories.

Some of the petitioners have challenged the interim order granted in August 2017 staying the operation of Para 5(2) under the GO 550 which mandates filling up of vacancy of medical seats by students from reserved category only if the vacancy arises due to the decision of the students from the reserved category who got the seat in open category chooses to move to other seat.

The court had directed the Health Universities to fill the seats only with merit candidates and not to allow sliding.

A division bench comprising Chief Justice Thottathil Bhaskaran Nair Radhakrishnan and Justice V. Rama-subramanian while hearing the petitions reminded that the courts have so far not given any clarity on issue of filling the vacant seats under the sliding system only with reserved candidates.

The bench said that the roaster system which allows filling up vacant posts with the reserved candidates of same communities was applicable to only to the employment. Referring play sliding parks, the bench expressed doubt that is it proper to allow the children to slide based on their identity or it would be proper to allow the kids to follow the queue.

Counsels appearing for the petitioners who had challenged the stay order told the court that due to the stay the reserved category candidates lost 497 seats in AP and 300 seats in Telangana State and the argument of some of the petitioners that due to the sliding the reservations are crossing the 50 per cent cap was baseless.

Mr D. Srinivas, advocate general of AP, said the petitioners who are contending that the 50 per cent reservations cap would cross due to filling of the vacant seats with reserved categories are not placed any data to prove their case.