The Hindu : Front Page : State Government challenges order on CET in Supreme Court

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Tuesday, Mar 07, 2006

Front Page

Front Page

State Government challenges order on CET in Supreme Court

J. Venkatesan

It is likely to be mentioned on Tuesday for early hearing

These students did not face the uncertainty over CET last year. — File photo

New Delhi: The Tamil Nadu Government on Monday filed a special leave petition in the Supreme Court, challenging a Madras High Court judgment quashing the legislation scrapping the Common Entrance Test (CET) for admission to undergraduate professional courses for 2006-2007.

It is likely to be mentioned on Tuesday for early hearing and stay of the February 27 judgment. The SLP said Tamil Nadu Regulation of Admission in Professional Courses Act, 2006, dispensing with the CET for State Board students, was enacted under Article 15 (5) of the Constitution. Subsequent to the 93rd Amendment (empowering States to make special provisions for advancement of socially and educationally backward class citizens), the Union Human Resource Development Ministry had written to the State Government asking it to take urgent follow-up action.

Taking into consideration representations from the public, the Government enacted the law, which did not require State Board students to appear for the CET. Only students of other streams such as the CBSE needed to take a CET to be on a par with the State Board students.

The SLP said the impugned judgment had failed to appreciate that State Board students and other Board students were two independent and different classes, and the two different methods adopted by the legislation on the basis of a common syllabus for admission to professional courses could not at all be violative of Article 14.

Advantage urban students

The High Court had erred in holding that the State legislation impinged on the field occupied by the Central law, i.e. MCI and AICTE regulations.

It failed to appreciate that to establish that rural students were socially and economically backward class, a high-level committee was constituted and it found that urban students had an advantage in taking the CET.

In Tamil Nadu, only one per cent of the students who appeared for the CET belonged to non-State Board and 99 per cent of them belonged to the State Board.

Uniform status

Therefore, the High Court ought to have seen that to achieve a uniform status it would be possible to conduct a CET for other Board students.

Contending that important questions of law of public importance were involved, the SLP sought the impugned judgment quashed and an interim stay on its operation.

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