NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court on Monday said since states have given up 15% of MBBS seats to the all India quota (AIQ), they can validly reserve rest of the seats in govt medical colleges for natives, and upheld Telangana’s medical admission norm mandating a candidate to study classes 9-12 within the state.During hearing of petitions, which questioned the validity of such a rule, a bench comprsing Chief Justice B R Gavai and Justice K Vinod Chandran had repeatedly asked the state govt that would it be unfair to students whose parents are natives of Telangana but for better coaching facilities sent their wards to cities outside the state.The bench had even suggested that the state could have made the 2024 domicile rule applicable from 2028 to allow students to study for four consecutive years in the state prior to taking the NEET-UG examination for admissions to medical colleges. However, in its judgment the bench upheld Telangana’s domicile rule while recording the state’s concessions — children of state govt employees and all India service Telangana cadre officers who studied outside because of posting of their parents outside the state would be eligible for admissions.Writing the judgment recording the relaxations for children of state and all India services employees posted outside Telangana, Justice Chandran said, “We uphold the Rules of 2017 as it stood amended in 2024.” This means that children of natives of Telangana, working in private companies and posted outside the state, would not be eligible to admissions in the 85% of MBBS seats in govt medical colleges of the state.Faulting the HC order scaling down the ‘domicile’ eligibility conditions for admission, SC cited its 2018 judgment upholding a similar domicile eligibility criterion devised by Assam.The court had said there was no data on record to state that adequate coaching facilities for medical entrance examination was unavailable in the state. It had said that those who can afford coaching outside the state fall in the affluent class of citizens and could compete for the 15% all India quota MBBS seats reserved in every state-run medical college.
