HC reserves order on Medical admission for tomorrow

Chennai, June 21 (UNI) Madras High Court today reserved orders on MBBS admission for tomorrow, on a petition, challenging the existing practice of admitting students to MBBS/BDS courses on the basis of marks obtained in entermedical as well as the Common Entrance Examination conducted by the Tamil Nadu Government.

A division bench, comprising Chief Justice A P Shah and Mr Justice D Murugesan reserved the orders on a petition filed by T Nikkin of Jolarpettai in Vellore District, seeking to quash Clause 8 (i) (ii) and (iv) of the prospectus for MBBS/BDS admissions for 2006-07 on the ground that they perpetuated discrimination.

After hearing the arguments from both sides, the bench reserved the orders.

In his petition, Nikkin described the method as being totally inconsistent with the regulations framed by the Medical Council of India (MCI).

He said entrance examination alone can be the basis of admission to MBBS/BDS for the academic year 2006-07 which will satisfy the test of uniform evaluation.

Meanwhile, the Additional Director of Medical Education Dr K Kalaiselvi filed a counter affidavit, stating that the present system of combining the marks of qualifying as well as Common Entrance Examination (CEE) has been in vogue for the past 22 years.

''The regulation framed by MCI do not prescribe the method of selection to be resorted to and do not preclude the qualifying marks from being taken into consideration for ascertaining the comparitive merits of the candidates. The substance of the MCI regulation was the compulsory conduct of CEE for ascertaining the merit of the candidates when there are more than one university. Regulation 5 (v) clearly indicates that to be eligible for competitive entrance examination, the candiates must have passed the qualifying examination as the eligiblity criteria,'' Kalaiselvi said.

Further, the regulation stipulates that individually in subjects of Physics, Chemistry, Biology and English, the candidates must have obtained minimum 50 per cent of marks at the qualifying examination.

These regulations clearly show that the academic qualification marks do play a vital role in the methodology of selection of candidates. The State Government was not prevented from prescribing selection pattern and the method of selection inclusive of comparative weightage of marks obtained in these examination. The admission process was in confirmity of the MCI rules and does not violate the condition, he added.

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