SUDHAKARA MALLER Vs. DIRECTORATE OF MEDICAL EDUCATION

JUDGEMENT

(1.) IN this writ petition the petitioner has sought for a writ of mandamus directing the first respondent herein to cancel the admission of the third respondent from the post graduate course (M. D. S.) in the speciality of prosthodontics and allot the same to the petitioner, stating that he holds a B. D. S. degree of the Tamilnadu Dr. M. G. R. Medical University: there is only one Government Dental College in Tamil Nadu for post-graduate studies and there are only seven specialities for which entrance examination has been conducted; there are only two seats in each speciality: out of this 50% of the seats in each speciality are reserved for service candidates and the rest are available for open competition, for Selection and admission on the basis of merit. The petitioner took the entrance examination conducted by the first respondent on 20. 5. 1995. he got 49. 95% of marks; out of two seats in orthodontics the first seat was given to service candidate who secured 47. 41 marks while the open category seat was given to a candidate who obtained 52. 70 marks.

(2.) SO far as the Prosthodontics specially is concerned, the seat reserved for service candidate was not filled up because there was no service candidate available for the said seat. The open seat was allotted to a candidate who secured 56. 34 marks. One Udita Sankhyayan who secured 50. 04 marks was placed in the waiting list at serial No. 1 while the petitioner was listed in the Waiting list at serial No. 2. Since the candidate who was originally selected did not join the course or left the course in Prosthodontics; the seat was allotted to Udita Sankhyayan who was No. 1 in the wait list. But so far as the seat reserved for service candidate there was none available from the service. Consequently the said seat ought to have been treated as open seat and allotted to the petitioner who is No. 2 in the waiting list, but strangely the said seat was allotted to third respondent who is not a service candidate in any sense of the term. Further her name was not in the wait list at all. It may be that the speciality of Prosthodontics was not one of the subjects opted by her. If that is so there was absolutely no justification for allotting the service seat to the third respondent. Under the circumstances the petitioner has filed this writ petition seeking the relief as stated above.

(3.) SMT. Saraswathi Prasad, the learned Additional government Pleader for respondents 1 and 2 submitted that the third respondents had applied for M. D. S. Course with four choices relating to Code Nos. 62 (Oral pathology), 63 (Oral Medicine and Radiology), 58 (Conservative Dentistry) and 59 (Periodontics): a candidate could give only two choices: the selection committee struck down the last two choices that is relating to code Nos. 58 and 59, but by mistake the first and second choices were not fed in the computer and on the other hand the third and fourth choices were fed into the computer: due to the said error the third respondent could not be selected on merits for the third and fourth choices: the Selection Committee having noticed the error, accepting the request of the third respondent, allotted a seat in the subject relating to code No. 61 (Prosthodontics) as no service candidate was available for the remainting one seat; and since the petitioner had scored lesser marks than the candidate selected in the open quota he was not selected.