TN : SC Orders Colleges To Create Additional Seats

The Supreme Court has hereby ordered the State Government of Tamil Nadu to create more additional seats in various educational institutions to ensure that meritorious students of the general category do not suffer due to the 669% reservation in Higher Education.

The Government was asked to take steps to increase seats in educational institutions as students with 99% marks were not getting admission in medical and engineering colleges. More over it had responded on a petition challenging the law on providing 69% reservation in Government jobs and Educational Institutions.

The issue took over when the court has received the petition filed by some students contending that reservation exceeding 50% in educational institutions and Government jobs was in contravention to the mandate of the apex court judgement.

Students are allotted medical and engineering colleges based on merit and the reservation rules. The directorate of Medical Education follows a very special formula wherein it allows students from the reserved category to take seats in colleges of their choice. This is an advantageous option for reserved category students as they can use their caste certificate in the open category itself. Many cases have been filed against the looping system, which affects many forward community students.

Though the state 'Tamil Nadu' has hundreds of Engineering colleges, many medical aspirants return home disappointed only because there aren't enough MBBA seats. TN consists of about 18 Government Medical colleges and a twice more private colleges affiliated to the state medical university. Together, they offer more than 2,661. Though Tamil Nadu has the largest number of medical colleges, the increase in government medical colleges will benefit many more students.

The state health minister Dr. VS Vijay said "The state has been working towards adding one medical college every year. This year we opened a college in Sivaganga. We are planning another in Tiruvanamalai next year. At the same time we are aslo planning to double our seats in some of the existing colleges like Madras Medical College and Stanley Medical College. This will give opportunity to many more students and improve the doctor-patient ratio in the state."