A fresh contempt petition has landed before the Supreme Court, challenging the decision to reassign Chandigarh's Union Territory (UT) quota seats under the All India Quota (AIQ) for postgraduate (PG) medical admissions. 

The petitioners argue this move contradicts the court’s earlier ruling in Tanvi Behl v Shrey Goel, which had struck down residence-based reservation for PG courses as unconstitutional.

As reported by LiveLaw, the bench of Justices KV Viswanathan and N Kotiswar Singh heard the matter on Tuesday and has now referred it to Chief Justice of India BR Gavai for listing before the same bench that delivered the Tanvi Behl verdict. 

Justice Viswanathan observed, “It’s only proper that being a contempt, it goes to the same judge… the admissions are over now, they can be reversed if there’s breach.”

The Tanvi Behl judgment, passed in January by Justices Hrishikesh Roy, Sudhanshu Dhulia, and SVN Bhatti, had invalidated domicile-based quotas in Chandigarh’s PG medical admissions. The ruling limited permissible reservation to institutional preference and held that state quota seats must be allocated strictly based on their NEET PG (National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test Postgraduate) merit.

According to LiveLaw, the petitioners, represented by Advocate-on-Record Jagjit Singh Chhabra, argued that an initial notice on April 9 had declared remaining UT Pool seats would be filled through institutional preference. However, a second notice on June 3 converted these into AIQ seats, prompting allegations of contempt.

On behalf of the Union, Additional Solicitor General Archana Pathak Dave countered that the Tanvi Behl judgment did not specify how the 25% seats should be reallocated. She added that the contested seats are already filled, with students submitting their mark sheets.

The Supreme Court will now await further action from the original Tanvi Behl bench to determine if the seat reclassification indeed violated its earlier directive.