SC agrees to hear plea over quota for kids of Armed Forces personnel

 

 

 

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.” 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. The HC 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 HC 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”.