India News | SC Agrees to Hear Plea over Reservation of Seats for Kids of Armed Forces Personnel

New Delhi, Mar 28 (PTI) The Supreme Court on Friday agreed to hear a plea against an order upholding the reservation of one per cent seats in medical courses for children of ex-servicemen and Armed Forces personnel.

A bench of Justices B R Gavai and Augustine George Masih said, "By way of ad interim order, the position as was existing prior to the dismissal of the writ petitions before the High Court shall continue to operate, until further orders."

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The bench issued notice and sought responses from the state of Telangana, Centre and others on the plea within four weeks.

The petitioners challenged the Telangana High Court order on the ground that the benefit of reservation of one per cent seats was confined only to the children of personnel of Army, Navy and Air Force and it excluded the wards of Central Armed Police Force (CAPF) personnel.

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The high court passed the order on two petitions challenging the constitutionality of the provisions of the Andhra Pradesh/Telangana Unaided Non-minority Professional Institutions (Regulations of Admissions into Under Graduate Medical and Dental Professional Courses) Rules, 2007, and the Telangana Medical and Dental Colleges Admission (Admission into MBBS & BDS Courses) Rules, 2017.

One of the pleas in the high court was filed by a petitioner, whose father had rendered services in the Border Security Force (BSF).

The petitioner had appeared in the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET) 2024.

The plea before the high court said that BSF, Central Industrial Security Force, Central Reserve Police Force, Indo-Tibetan Border Police and Sashastra Seema Bal were part of the CAPF.

It said the rules confining the benefit of reservation of one per cent seats to children of the personnel of the Army, Navy and Air Force were "discriminatory and bad in law".

"The interesting conundrum in the instant case is whether the petitioners/children of BSF personnel are sailing in the same boat. In other words, whether the children of CAPF personnel can be treated at par with the children of Army, Navy and Air Force," the high court said.

Admittedly, the high court said, the personnel engaged by the Army, Navy and Air Force were governed by different set of Acts/Rules and their service conditions were different than the service conditions of CAPF personnel.

The high court said "no doubt" in certain courses in the state of Telangana, the government apart from the children of the Army, Navy and Air Force personnel, provided reservation to the children of CAPF personnel as well.

However, it added, "Merely because in some courses reservation is extended to both categories, neither equality between the two is established nor any enforceable right is created in favour of the present petitioners."

While dismissing the pleas, the high court held the rules not to be unconstitutional or infringing the equality clause enshrined in Article 14 of the Constitution.

(The above story is verified and authored by Press Trust of India (PTI) staff. PTI, India’s premier news agency, employs more than 400 journalists and 500 stringers to cover almost every district and small town in India.. The views appearing in the above post do not reflect the opinions of LatestLY)