(1.) The petitioner Krishna Malik has sought a direction from this Court that she be given admission in the MBBS and that the admissions of respondent Nos. 2 and 3 be quashed. The facts of this case are as under :-
(2.) Upon notice of the petition, a reply has been filed only on behalf of respondent No.1. The stand taken therein is that the petitioner had not come to the Court with clean hands as she had been appending different certificates at different times in order to support her claim to the admission in question. It has been submitted that the case of the petitioner was rejected primarily on the ground that for admission to the MBBS course for the year 1993 she had given a certificate which was at variance with the certificate that she had filed with the application form for the year 1994 i.e. the selection impugned in the present petition. Copies of the certificates filed earlier were also appended as Annexures R-I and R-II with the reply.
(3.) We have heard learned counsel for the parties and gone through the record and find that the present petition deserves to succeed. At the very outset, Mr. R.K.Malik, learned counsel for the petitioner, has pointed out that for admission in the year 1993 reservation was made for the children of Ex-servicemen but there was no system of priority which was introduced for the first time in the year 1994 and, as such, the certificates appended with the application form in the year 1994 had been procured to meet those changed requirements. He has also urged that a comparison of Annexures R-I and R-II with the certificates filed in the present petition, that is, Annexures P-1 and P-4 in sum and substance were identical and there was no qualitative difference between the two. There is palpable merit in the stand of the petitioner. We have gone through the certificates carefully and find that the father of the petitioner had been boarded out as being disabled during the military service and this seems to be the import of all the certificates that have been put on record either by the petitioner or by the respondents. Mr. Malik's argument that the petitioner's case fell within priority No.2 is, however, on the face of it untenable. Priority No.4 talks about ex-serviceman disabled in action and boarded out from the service on that account. We take this priority to mean that an ex-serviceman to fall within this category must be found to have been disabled in action, that is, suffered injury while in battle or on active service or duty. We are, however, of the view that the case of the petitioner falls within Priority No.2 that is, disabled in service and boarded out with disability attributable to service, as would be clear from the certificate appended with the pleadings. The petitioner was accordingly liable to be considered under this priority.