DR. TANVI BEHL Vs. SHREY GOEL

JUDGEMENT

(1.) The question before this Court is whether residence-based reservation in Post Graduate (PG) Medical Courses by a State is constitutionally valid? On this the precise questions formulated by the Division Bench of this Court, which have now come up for determination before this Court, are as follows:

(2.) Before we come to answer these questions, we must state the facts first in order to get a perspective of the case before us. The case is from the Union Territory of Chandigarh which has just one Medical College called 'The Government Medical College and Hospital, Chandigarh' (hereinafter referred to as the 'Medical College'). On 28/3/2019, the process of admissions to PG Medical Course in the said Medical College had started. The Medical College had 64 PG Medical seats in its State Quota and the relevant clause of the prospectus, which was challenged before the High Court of Punjab and Haryana, distributed these seats as follows:

(3.) Petitions were filed before the Punjab and Haryana High Court challenging the above provision as it gave reservation on the basis of residence, which resulted in all 64 seats being filled either by the residents of Chandigarh or by students who had done their MBBS from the same Medical College under institutional preference. The petitioners therein had argued that the above provision was in direct conflict with various decisions of the Supreme Court including Jagadish Saran v. Union of India (1980) 2 SCC 768, Dr. Pradeep Jain v. Union of India (1984) 3 SCC 654 and Saurabh Chaudri v. Union of India (2003) 11 SCC 146. The High Court in its well-considered decision, after taking note of the long line of decisions of this Court, but primarily the three above-cited decisions, came to the conclusion that the reservation made for the PG Medical Course in the Medical College was on the basis of a longdiscarded principle of domicile or residence, was bad, and had allowed the petitions cancelling the admission of such students.