Single judge order on quota challanged

Chennai, July 4: An appeal againt a single judge order upholding Tamil Nadu government law mandating surrender of a specified percentage of seats to the government quota by self-financing colleges was filed in the Madras High Court today.
The order on July 2 had upheld the provisions bringing the management quota under the single window system of admission, besides mandating surrender of specified number of seats under the government quota.

The appeal filed by Consortium of Self Financing Professional Arts and Sciences Colleges, seeking to set aside the single judge order, would come up for hearing before a division bench tomorrow.

The Consortium also sought to restrain the government from allotting students through its counselling 65 per cent of seats in respect of non-minority and 50 per cent of minority colleges, pending disposal of the appeal.

The Consortium submitted that the single judge ought to have seen that the provisions and the Government Orders were violative of Article 30 (1) and 19 (1) (g) of the Constitution since it seeks to appropriate quota of admission without their being any consensus between the government and private colleges.

The provisions were violative since minority institutions had got the right to fill up seats from the students belonging to their community. Appropriating 50 per cent of the seats from the minority insitutions would place the institutions losing the minority status, the appellant argued.

The consortium submitted that the single judge had failed to consider that the Act, having come into force on March 6, 2007, the consensus referred to in the provisions could only be prospective and could not take in any consensus arrived at before the Act came into force. The single judge had erred in referring the share of quota for 20 years. Only after the ruling of the Inamdar's case, the Supreme Court held that it would be imperssiable for the state to demand seats and the position prevailed before Inamdar's case was totally irrelevant, the consortium added.

The consortium submitted that the single judge having held that the right of admission of an unaided minority and non-minority institutions within the helm of affairs, erred in upholding the provisions which takes away the rights of the institutions to conduct an independent examination and compels the management only to admit students on the basis of the marks obtained in the relevant subjects in the qualifying examiation.

The single judge erred in holding the provisions which obliges the consortium to prepare a rank list and allot the students through central counselling. The very same question has been decided against the state in 2004, wherein a Single Judge and a Division Bench held that it was an unfetterred right of the management to choose the students to be admitted following a procedure which was far transparent and non-exploitive, the appellant added.