The Kerala High Court (HC) rejecting an argument over reservation by the Indian Institute of Management (IIM) - Kozhikode ordered the Institute to admit PhD student via the OBC quota policy.
The Premiere Management Institute in Kerala had earlier argued that the reservation system cannot be implemented in PhD admissions as the course does not have a pre-determined number of seats.
Ruling came last week
In a ruling last week, Justice T.R. Ravi, directed IIM- Kozhikode to accept the non-creamy layer OBC candidate into a research program.
According to the reports, the candidate is an alumnus of IIM-K and had been eliminated from the PhD admission process after the interview.
Candidates not aware about cut-off marks
Candidates were not informed about the cut-off marks for interviews in the admission criteria for different categories.
According to the Central Educational Institution (Reservation in Admission) Act, 2006, a central government institution has to reserve 15 per cent seats for Scheduled Castes, 7.5 per cent seats for Scheduled Tribes and 27 per cent for non-creamy layer OBCs.
IIM-K manipulated with enrollment procedure
The candidate then had to file a petition which claimed that the institute manipulated the enrollment procedure and formulated a cut-off after the interview process was completed.
"This is a violation as per the Supreme Court judgement of K Manjusri where the court looked into selection of district and session judges of Andhra Pradesh State Higher Judicial Services. The judgement stated that rules of the game cannot be changed after the entire game is over and results are awaited in terms of recruitment or selection of candidates,” said MKS Menon, Candidates' advocate.
High court ruled in favour of student
The Court then ruled, "The reservation policy has not been followed and the selection criteria were sought to be changed after the entire selection was over".
The interview for the PhD admission was held on August 9 and the petitioner received the rejection email on September 7. He came to know about the cut-off marks after the interview round was over set by the Institute.
