The Hindu : National : Seat sharing: Supreme Court refuses to pass orders

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Wednesday, Jul 25, 2007
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Seat sharing: Supreme Court refuses to pass orders

J. Venkatesan

New Delhi: A three-Judge Bench of the Supreme Court headed by the Chief Justice K.G. Balakrishnan refused to pass any interim order on Tuesday on a batch of special leave petitions filed by self financing engineering colleges in Tamil Nadu challenging the surrender of 65 per cent seats to the government. The Bench that included Justice R.V. Raveendran and Justice Dalveer Bhandari told Arun Jaitley, Rajeev Dhavan, Ranjit Kumar and Mariarputham, counsel for the colleges, that “what is applicable to one private medical college may not be applicable to 160 engineering colleges who had given their consent for the seat sharing.

Taking away the entire seats in these colleges by the managements will deprive students of so many seats and may pose problems in the counselling process.”

However, Mr. Jaitley pointed out that the petitioners (before the apex court) were those who had not given any undertaking to the government on seat sharing.

He refuted the government’s contention that 160 colleges had given their consent.

He said only 64 colleges had given their consent for the seat sharing arrangement and this could not be put against those who had not signed the agreement.

He said the petitioners had a constitutional right to make admissions and the State could not interfere with it. He said once a law had been held unconstitutional, the High Court could not make it operative from next year.

He brought to the notice of the court that another Bench of Justice B.N. Agrawal and Justice P.P. Naolekar had on July 19 stayed the operation of the High court judgment so far as Chettinad Medical College was concerned.

He said “the apex court cannot pass one order for ‘A’ and another for ‘B’” The CJI then said that he was not passing any order and that he would post the petitions for hearing on July 30 before a Bench of Justice Agrawal and Justice Naolekar. When Mr. Jaitley sought stay on counselling till July 30, the Bench said “it is not possible. Any way there is only counselling. You are not going to make any admissions.”

Senior counsel Abhishek Singhvi, appearing for the State opposed stay and said none of the colleges had challenged the seat sharing order in the High Court.

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