The Supreme Court has ruled that medical colleges in Maharashtra will not be able to include the 10 percent EWS quota since admissions started long before the bill was passed. The quota will take force in int he 2019-2020 academic session, the Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi noted.
A vacation bench headed by the Chief Justice stated that the admission process for PG medical courses started in November 2018 while the 103 Constitutional amendments granting 10 percent EWS quota was passed in January this year and the Maharashtra Government passed enforced the quota for PG Medical courses in March.
"Ten percent EWS quota cannot be granted to the ongoing admission process. You cannot change the rules of the game when the game is on," the bench said. On May 20, state governor C Vidyasagar Rao had signed an ordinance to provide quota under the Socially and Economically Backward Class (SEBC) Reservation Act, 2018, to candidates from the Maratha community seeking admission to post-graduate medical and dental courses.
The bench also quashed admissions made under EWS quota among the general category candidates. The court said that 10 percent EWS quota cannot be granted at the cost of others unless the Medical Council of India creates additional seats to accommodate the students seeking admission under the newly introduced quota.
"At this stage, the State can act under the enabling provisions and introduce reservation but unless additional seats are created by MCI, the existing seats cannot be subjected to the EWS reservation amendment," the court said. The state government had earlier clarified that the quota was applicable from the time it released the prospectus for the said courses in February 2019.
Maharashtra government had on November 30 last year cleared a 16 per cent quota for the community in education and government jobs, identifying them as Socially and Economically Backward Class (SEBC). The direction came on a plea filed by a student Rajat Rajendra Agrawal from general category on whether the Constitutional amendment would apply to the ongoing admission process.
