The consensual agreement between the State Government and the Association of Minority Professional Colleges in Karnataka for seat-sharing in medical colleges cannot be treated as a ‘law’ or an ‘order’ for reserving seats under provisions of the Karnataka Educational Institutions (Regulations of Admission in the Hyderabad-Karnataka Region) Order, 2013, said the High Court of Karnataka.
The court also quashed the revised seat matrix issued by the Government authorities allowing the Telugu linguistic minority students only from the Hyderabad-Karnataka region to avail seats in Navodaya Medical College (NMC), Raichur, for both PG and UG medical courses for the current academic year.
Besides, the court directed the Karnataka Examinations Authority to conduct second round of counselling afresh for NMC permitting eligible Telugu linguistic minority students in the entire State to apply for admission to these courses.
A Division Bench comprising Justice K. Somashekar and Justice Anant Ramanath Hegde passed the order while partly allowing the petitions filed by NMC.
“The consensual agreement under scrutiny is only an ad hoc arrangement between the parties to balance the conflicting claims in the matter of seat arrangements and other incidental matters relating to the admission of students to the professional course and it cannot have a status of an order under Article 371(J),” the Bench observed.
Noticing that the court in 2014 had stayed the operation of the KEI (RAH-KR) Order, 2013, the Bench said that this order passed under the Article 371(J) was not available for the Government for implementation when the agreement was signed between the Government and the association in January 2022.
From a combined reading of clauses in the consensual agreement, there is no difficulty in holding that the consensual agreement doesn’t restrict the institution from filling up 66% of the seats out of 55% of the total seats available to it by treating the entire State of Karnataka as one unit, the Bench said.
The Bench also said that the State Government was conscious of the fact that the reservation policy of the State, including reservations for SCs/STs/OBCs and the Hyderabad-Karnataka region reservation under the Article 371(J), shall be implemented for the 20%-25% seats in the institutions that are surrendered to the Government quota.
