Mumbai: GR discriminating among "reserved" category students quashed

Mumbai: GR discriminating among "reserved" category students quashed

Narsi BenwalUpdated: Saturday, May 30, 2020, 03:00 AM IST
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Bombay High Court |

Mumbai: Observing that the weaker a student is socially and economically, the farther he or she is from education, the Bombay High Court on Friday quashed a notification of the government that "discriminated" amongst reserved category students who secured admissions to professional and technical courses through the centralised admission process (CAP). The High Court ordered the state education authorities to reimburse the fees of 26 students belonging to the Scheduled Caste (SC), who were initially denied the facility as they did not get admission through the CAP.

A full bench of Justices Amjad Sayed, Dama Naidu and Prakash Naik said, "Still access to education depends, among other things, on the student’s economic strength. Socially and economically speaking, the weaker the student is, the farther he is from quality education. And the present case concerns the right of a few down-trodden students for recompense on their educational expenditure."

The observation was made while quashing a February 2013 government resolution, by which the state restricted the reimbursement of fees to only those reserved category students who secured admissions through the state-approved CAP. The GR was a follow-up on the state's policy for fee reimbursement to SC, ST and OBC students pursuing professional courses in Maharashtra.

The GR was impugned by over 26 students from a city-based college as they were denied the reimbursement since they did not get admissions through CAP. Notably, whether a student secures admission through CAP or not, he or she has to appear for the Common Entrance Test (CET).

The full bench noted this aspect and held that the GR was arbitrary and discriminatory in denying reimbursement to non-CAP students despite all of them appearing for CET. In its 75-page judgment, the judges said that it was not mandatory for the government to return the fees of the reserved category students. "No law mandates that the fee of the SC students must be returned or that they should be paid back their educational expenditure. It is, indeed, a welfare decision of the government. The modern state is a source of succor," the judges observed. The bench further said that whatever it does, a government is always a government and, as such, is subject to the restraints, inherent in a democratic society.

"The government cannot lay down arbitrary and capricious standards for the choice of persons with whom alone it will deal. Every action of the government must be informed with reason and should be free from arbitrariness because the government is always a government," the judges observed. The bench in its order further said that the move of the government to reimburse the fees of reserved category students is a positive one for their welfare. "For integrating a historically, socially, and economically marginalised section into the mainstream society, education is the surefire device. It not only enlightens but also elevates an individual’s status," reads the judgment authored by Justice Naidu.

The bench further said that the policy of returning fees is "need based and not merit based." "Pursuing courses—technical ones at that—with poverty hard on a student’s heels is no easy task. As the students from the marginalised sections move up in the education ladder, their proportionate representation falls. There are more dropouts. And precisely for this reason, the government has come up with the beneficial policy of financial help to those students," the judges held, while quashing the GR.

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