In a massive victory for the DMK government, the Madras High Court bench upheld the decision of the state of granting 7.5% reservation for government school students for medical admissions in Tamil Nadu.
The first bench headed by Chief Justice Munishwar Nath Bhandari and Justice D Bharatha Chakravarthy pronounced he verdict in response to the petitions filed by private school students challenging the reservation for government school students and demanded the same for themselves.
The DMK government said that it is a huge victory for them as the medical aspirants belonging from an economically weaker section will get a huge benefit.
“Within 10 months of our government which works towards social justice, this is our third legal victory.”
Chief Minister MK Stalin.
Senior Counsel Sriram Panchu, representing the petitioners argued that Article 15(1) cannnot apply to a situation like this as Article 15(1) is for very exceptional categories. He said that the DMK government is trying to bring a class within a class. He further added that the preferential treatment to the students of government schools must be justified by the government.
Senior advocates including Kapil Sibal, P Wilson and Tamil Nadu Advocate general R Shunmugasundaram defended the quota which was introduced by the DMK government to uplift the downtrodden sections of the society.
The quota was introduced for achieving far-reaching goals and is considered a big boost to the DMK government’s commitment to ensuring social justice and betterment of the people belonging to lower section of the society, the main motto of the Dravidian movement.
“Take this in the right spirit…like when we stand at the start line of a running race and if a person has a difficulty, we allow this person to start at some distance ahead (vertical reservation) or take him along with us (horizontal reservation) and will not say ‘get out if you can’t run like me’. After all, the Supreme Court says, ‘human sympathies’ are also part of ‘merit’,”read the court order.