The Madras High Court on Thursday reserved its orders on a batch of cases filed against a State law passed in October 2020 to provide 7.5% horizontal reservation to students who pass out of government schools and clear the National Entrance-cum-Eligibility Test (NEET), in medical admissions.
First Division Bench of Chief Justice Munishwar Nath Bhandari and Justice D. Bharatha Chakravarthy deferred their verdict after hearing arguments advanced by senior counsel Sriram Panchu for private school students and senior counsel Kapil Sibal, P. Wilson, and Amit Anand Tiwari for the State government.
The judges also heard senior counsel Fr. Xavier Arulraj who attacked the legislation for having excluded students of government-aided private schools from its purview. The government primarily relied upon the findings of Justice P. Kalaiyarasan committee report, which highlighted the drawbacks faced by government school students.