The Hindu : Tamil Nadu News : Counselling kept in abeyance

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, Jul 07, 2004

Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu

Counselling kept in abeyance

By Our Staff Reporter

CHENNAI, JULY 6. Grappling with two major batches of cases, the Madras High Court today ordered that counselling for engineering and medical courses be kept in abeyance until further orders.

(While the exercise has been nearly completed for medical admissions, engineering counselling, scheduled to begin on July 8, has since been postponed. Anna University has said the new dates will be intimated to students in due course.)

Giving its direction on "22 disputed questions case," the First Bench, comprising the Chief Justice B. Subhashan Reddy and Justice Prabha Sridevan, posted the matter to Friday for further hearing. Earlier, it reserved orders on another important batch of writ petitions against treating improvement candidates on a par with regular Plus-Two students.

In the morning, during the course of arguments on the legality of treating them equally, the Bench observed that prima facie there existed a strong case in favour of regular candidates if the practice of giving priority to "seniority in age" alone was taken into account. N.R. Chandran, Advocate-General, however, maintained that the age factor alone was not considered for selection and that as per the prospectus, it was only one among four other norms governing admissions in case of a tie between two students in all other respects.

However, the Bench said age preference could be exercised in case of a tie between two regular students or two improvement stream candidates. But, it was untenable to exercise the option when a regular and an improvement candidate were involved. The principle of promissory estoppel also would not help improvement candidates who had benefited by the age factor, as the impugned provision sought to undermine a fundamental right on equal protection of law for all, it was observed.

On an analysis, the court also noticed that even if the impugned provision — Clause 8(c)(4) in the prospectus — was set aside, either none or only very few of the 945 selected candidates would be out of the list. The ranking might get topsy-turvy, but it should not stop the court from setting right a legal anomaly, the Bench observed.

Later in the afternoon, when it was pointed out that any order against counselling at this stage would inconvenience hundreds of students, the Bench held that inconvenience at this stage was better than confusion and complication later when even admitted candidates would be unsure of their prospects.

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