K BALASUBRAMANIAM Vs. SECRETARY

JUDGEMENT

(1.) ADMISSION to Post Graduate Medical Courses, without fail, has been the subject matter of litigation year after year, under one pretext or the other and the batch of cases on hand belongs to the same genre.

(2.) FOR the first time, the Government of Tamil Nadu introduced a reservation of 50% of seats in Post Graduate Medical Courses, for in-service candidates in the academic year 1999-2000. The stipulation was challenged in a batch of writ petitions, which eventually landed up in the Supreme Court. The reservation was upheld by the Supreme Court in K.Duraisamy vs. State of Tamil Nadu {2001 (2) SCC 538}. Therefore, the said pattern is in vogue in the State of Tamil Nadu since then.

(3.) AGGRIEVED by such a restriction imposed upon the expression "service candidates", a few candidates working as Medical Officers in Institutions such as Ordnance Factory, Tiruchirapalli, Employees' State Insurance Corporation Hospitals, Central Government Health Scheme Hospitals, Railway Hospital and Tuticorin Port Trust Hospital, have come up with the writ petitions W.P.Nos.2089, 2267, 3100, 3101 and 3792 of 2009, seeking either a direction to treat the Medical Officers serving in the hospitals of the Government of India, Public Sector Undertakings etc., as service candidates entitled to compete under the 50% quota or a declaration that the restriction of the benefit only to those serving in the hospitals of the Government of Tamil Nadu or local bodies as ultra vires Article 14 of the Constitution. The petitioners in these five writ petitions are on common ground.