R ILAYARAJA Vs. STATE OF TAMIL NADU

JUDGEMENT

(1.) The petitioners in the various writ petitions have challenged some of the clauses in the prospectus issued by the Selection Committee, Directorate of Medical Education, Chennai for the admission to Post Graduate Diploma/Degree/ M.D.S./ Five Year M.Ch.(Neuro-Surgery) Courses in Tamil Nadu Government Medical/Dental and Self-Financing Dental Colleges.

(2.) The petitioners have challenged clause-28 of the said prospectus in so far as it empowers the Government to reduce the minimum eligibility marks for service candidates to fill up unfilled service vacancies in the general interest of the public. The petitioners have also challenged the clauses-32 and 33 which provide that there will be no rechecking/revaluation/retotalling of answer sheets and no candidate will be allowed to take back the booklets and request for provision of Xerox copies of the question booklet and answer sheets will not be entertained. Some of them have challenged the clause-48 and some others have challenged the clause 61(c) of the prospectus. For the sake of convenience, I consider clause by clause challenged in the writ petitions. Preliminary objections:-

(3.) Learned Advocate General submitted that the writ petitions are not maintainable, and according to him, the prospectus is binding and the petitioner who have taken up the examinations on the basis of the prospectus are not entitled to question the same after they found themselves not eligible for admission. Learned Advocate General referred to the decision of a Bench of this Court in RATHNASWAMY,Dr.A., v. DIRECTOR OF MEDICAL EDUCATION (1986 WRIT L.R. 207) and the decision of a Full Bench of this Court in MURALI,R. Dr. v. Dr.R.KAMALAKKANNAN (1999(III) CTC 675) and also the decision of the Supreme Court in K.DURAISAMY v. STATE OF T.N. (2001) 2 SCC 538) and submitted that the Supreme Court has not gone into the question of estoppel since the Supreme Court decided the case on merits of the matter. Learned Advocate General also submitted that some of the petitioners have filed the writ petitions after taking up the counselling and since they took up the chance in the counselling and after having failed in the process of selection, it is not open to them to challenge the prospectus in the writ petitions. In so far as service candidates are concerned his next submission is that the service candidates form a separate category from the open category candidates and there are two groups and it is not open to the petitioners who are in open category to question 50% of the seats made available to inservice candidates and therefore it is not open to them to challenge some of the clauses in the prospectus relating to the inservice candidates. I propose to deal with the preliminary objections raised by the learned Advocate General when I consider the validity of the clauses of the prospectus. Clause-28:-