BANGALORE: Expressing shock at the Cabinet's decision to reserve 50 per cent of the seats in minority colleges under the "government quota," the Karnataka Religious and Linguistic Minority Professional Colleges' Association on Sunday chose to await the Supreme Court's reaction to an appeal to be filed by the State.

"If they take 50 per cent of the seats, what would be left for us? We had voluntarily agreed to set aside 25 per cent of the seats in our member colleges to Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes and weaker sections of society. We had even approached the Chief Minister on the matter," the association secretary, Shafi Ahmed, told The Hindu.

The Cabinet decision to include minority colleges went against the recent Constitution amendment Bill, which had kept minority institutions outside the ambit of reservations, he said. "We had met the Chief Minister and represented to him that as per the Supreme Court judgment and the Constitution amendment, we are entitled to 100 per cent of the seats," Mr. Ahmed said.

The association had decided to reserve 12.5 per cent of the seats for Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe students and another 12.5 per cent for students from the weaker sections of society, leaving the remaining 75 per cent for the managements. "We had also opted to conduct our own admission test for the postgraduate medical and dental courses," he said.

There are 13 minority medical colleges in the State, eight linguistic and five religious institutions. Last year, the Government had a 50 per cent share of the 800 MBBS seats available in these institutions.

Among the 13 minority dental colleges in the State, the Government had a share of 450 seats. Minority engineering colleges accounted for 6,150 seats last year, of which 3,075 seats were allotted under the government quota.

To move court

Meanwhile, the Karnataka Private Medical and Dental Colleges Association is all set to file a petition before the Supreme Court on Monday challenging the Venkataraman Committee's decision not to let it conduct a Post Graduate Entrance Test (PGET) for its member colleges.

This association had opted to go ahead with its PGET, to be conducted by the Consortium of Medical, Engineering and Dental Colleges of Karnataka (COMEDK) on January 29. "We will determine our right to conduct our own test," COMEDK executive secretary, S. Kumar, has said.

Reacting to Saturday's Cabinet decision, he said it was another case of the Government reading the law wrong.

The Government, he said, wanted to take on the Supreme Court, which had ruled against any reservations; the Medical Council of India and even the Union Government, which had kept the minority colleges outside the ambit of the Constitution amendment Bill. "The Government will face an uphill task taking on these three," he said.

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