HYDERABAD: The former Chief Minister and Telugu Desam president, N. Chandrababu Naidu, has deplored the Supreme Court judgment abolishing reservations in private colleges.

He has urged the Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh, to convene an all-party meeting to discuss as to how the reservation policy in these institutions can be restored.

The Government should explore whether a Constitutional amendment was required to get over legal wrangles, he told a news conference here on Saturday.

To meet Manmohan

Besides writing to the Prime Minister, the party MPs would meet him in this regard when Parliament resumes its session on Tuesday to discuss the issue, he said.

Mr. Naidu said it was up to all political parties and also the judiciary to ponder over the limitations of weaker sections in accessing education in a developing country.

Opportunities for development will open up for such a country only in future. More so, the opportunities would be available only to "knowledge society".

In the Indian context, he said the Governments were not in a position to provide education to everyone from its resources. Privatisation of education was inevitable.

TDP's guiding principle

But, if the reservations were not enforced in private institutions, the weaker sections would be disadvantaged.

Mr. Naidu said the guiding principle of the Government led by him was to have reservations, scholarships, recognition of merit and exams in all professional colleges.

The scheme had yielded good results as 40,000 of the total 85,000 engineering seats in the State were cornered by SCs, STs and BCs.

He feared that the judgment of the apex court could reverse this trend.

Demanding social justice, he said the standard of living of weaker sections would improve over a period with successive generations accessing education under the reservation policy. Otherwise, they would continue to remain weak.

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