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Kerala moves apex court over admission order

J. Venkatesan

NEW DELHI: The Kerala Government on Monday moved the Supreme Court challenging an interim order of the Kerala High Court directing the State to maintain status quo as of 2005-2006 on quotas and fee structure in respect of admissions to private unaided professional colleges.

Senior counsel C. S. Vaidyanathan made a mention before a three-judge Bench headed by Chief Justice Y. K. Sabharwal about the filing of the appeal and pleaded for early listing of the matter. The Bench permitted the matter to be included in Tuesday's `mention list.' A batch of appeals filed by State counsel P. V. Dinesh contended that in the `Inamdar judgment,' the apex court had held that the respective State Governments could enact a legislation governing admissions. Accordingly, the Kerala Government had enacted the Kerala Professional Colleges (Prohibition of Capitation Fee, Regulation of Admission, Fixation of Non-exploitative Fee and Other Measures to ensure Equity and Excellence in Professional Education) Act, 2006. The Government said that though the Inamdar judgment prohibited reservation of seats, after the 93rd Constitution amendment, the States were competent to make special provisions for the advancement of education of the socially and educationally backward classes of citizens by providing reservation.

`Infructuous'

While so, the High Court was not justified in following an interim order of this court passed on May 29. It said that at the time of the apex court passing this order, the Kerala legislation was not enacted and once a valid law was enacted, the pending writ petition on which such an order was passed had become infructuous.

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