The Supreme Court on Wednesday ruled in favour of several students from reserved categories who had been denied admission to MBBS courses under the Unreserved Category Government School (UR-GS) quota in Madhya Pradesh.
The decision comes after the petitioners challenged the Madhya Pradesh High Court's earlier rulings that upheld the state's decision to deny them seats.
The Supreme Court bench of Justices BR Gavai and KV Viswanathan cancelled the High Court orders of December 2023 and January 2024, which had dismissed the petitions. The petitioner had argued that they were unfairly deprived of admission to the UR-GS quota seats despite scoring more than other candidates who were admitted.
The dispute revolves around Madhya Pradesh government's handling of horizontal reservations under the Admission Rules, 2018. The petitioner, who had qualified under the reserved categories but also had higher merit scores than many candidates, contended that they should have been allotted these seats before they were released to the open category.
Justice Gavai said that the Madhya Pradesh government's methodology of further sub-classifying candidates into categories was legally unsustainable.
The top court noted that in the current case, the petitioners, who had secured higher marks than some candidates admitted under the UR-GS category, were unjustly denied admission.
As the admissions process for 2023-24 is already complete, the top court directed the government to admit the petitioners in the upcoming academic session of 2024-25.
Seven seats have been reserved for this purpose as per an earlier interim order by the top court.
The decision is expected to have significant implications for the implementation of reservation policies across the country, particularly in educational institutions.
