After listening to arguments advanced on the petitioner’s behalf, the judge passed the orders for the implementation of an earlier government order dated November 7, 2020.
The Madras High Court has directed the state government to allocate 50% of the super-speciality seats in government medical colleges in Tamil Nadu to in-service government doctors for the academic year 2021-22. Justice M Dhandapani passed the order on Wednesday while hearing a writ petition filed by Dr D Suresh, Assistant Professor in General Medicine at Madras Medical College, after the arguments made by senior counsel P Wilson and advocate G Sankaran.
The petitioner noted that a larger bench of the Supreme Court (SC) had given a ruling that rule 9 of MCI regulations, 2000, does not affect the states providing separate reservation for in-service doctors seeking admission to postgraduate courses, according to a report in The New Indian Express.
The judge directed for the implementation of an earlier government order dated November 7, 2020, which allocated 50% of seats in super-speciality courses in favour of in-service doctors in Tamil Nadu, for the current academic year. Further, a bench of the Supreme Court in 2020, had held that 50% of super specialty seats can be allotted to in-service doctors in 2021-22 if there is no legal impediment, based on an appeal of the Kerala government and also, the Tamil Nadu government had already been allotting 50% of super-specialty seats to in-service doctors by conducting a state-level entrance test till 2016.
According to a Times of India report, though the state had passed a government order providing the reservation in the year 2020, it was not permitted by the Medical Counselling Committee, Director-General of Health Services and Union Ministry of Health, which took this issue once again to the SC.
The SC had then said that as the counselling for academic year 2020-21 had commenced back then, it could not permit the reservation for that year, the petitioner had said. Now, as the the admission processes for the current academic year is yet to commence, the petitioner made a representation to the authorities to implement the said GO (Government Order) passed by the state government, and as no action was taken, the petitioner approached had approached the high court.
(With PTI inputs)
Source: The News Minute