The Madras High Court on Thursday upheld the constitutional validity of a State law passed in October 2020 to provide 7.5% horizontal reservation to NEET-qualified government school students in the admission to undergraduate medical courses. It held that government school students belonged to a “socially and educationally backward class” and therefore the reservation made in their favour was well within the powers of the State legislature.
But Chief Justice Munishwar Nath Bhandari and Justice D. Bharatha Chakravarthy directed the government to review the Tamil Nadu Admission to Undergraduate Courses in Medicine, Dentistry, Indian Medicine and Homeopathy on Preferential Basis to Students of Government Schools Act, 2020, after five years as recommended by a commission headed by retired Madras High Court judge P. Kalaiyarasan. The first Division Bench also directed the State to improve the standard of education in the government schools during the interregnum, so that a need does not arise for extending the reservation beyond the stipulated period of five years. It dismissed writ petitions filed by private school students challenging the validity of the 2020 law.
