Madras HC Urges Revival of MBBS/BDS Reservation for PM Rashtriya Bal Puraskar Awardees

Recently the Madurai Bench of the Madras High Court has suggested that the Ministry of Women and Child Development should restart reserving two MBBS/BDS seats for students who have won the Pradhan Mantri Rashtriya Bal Puraskar.

The bench believes that reserving the two seats for the awardees of PM Rashtriya Bal Puraskar in the central pool for MBBS/BDS admissions encourages the students of our country to get an opportunity to excel in science and technology and helps them achieve greater heights in their lives.

Although the court acknowledged that the state had the right to end the reservation policy, the bench of Justice RMT Teeka Raman and Justice N Senthilkumar stated that such reservations would help foster scientific thinking among students as envisioned in the Constitution’s preamble.

The Ministry of Women and Child Development argued that receiving the award itself serves as a form of recognition and that such extra benefits, like reservations, should not be given to these awardees.

However, the court disagreed with this argument and stated that children who were awarded for exceptional achievements deserve further encouragement and that this reservation policy, which continued for a brief period, was rightly introduced for this very purpose. These observations were a part of the appeal made by a medical aspirant who had been denied relief by a single judge’s bench.

The medical aspirant passed the NEET exam in 2021 and expected that he would be selected under the central pool. He had approached the Ministry of Women and Child Development to recommend his name to the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare for the two available reservation vacancies for the MBBS course for the 2021-2022 academic year.

The Assistant Solicitor General of India stated that this reservation scheme had been discontinued from the academic year 2022-2023 and was no longer applicable. Additionally, the government expressed that the Ministry of Women and Child Development was unable to identify the eligible awardees for seat allocation, thereby losing the awardees’ opportunity to enjoy the benefit.

The Health Ministry was informed regarding this issue, which accepted that the seats were surrendered and that necessary allocations were made.

The division bench of the court mentioned that they were not entitled to change the previous decision made by the single judge’s order as it was a policy decision of the government. Since the seats were already given away, the court explained that they would not be able to provide the relief that the medical aspirant sought.

Ultimately, the court closed the case by recommending the resumption of the reservation scheme for the PM Rashtriya Bal Puraskar awardees.

(Input from various sources)

(Rehash/Dr. Nethra Suryanarayanan/MSM)