Jaya: Court blow

Chennai, Feb. 27: All students aspiring for admission to professional courses in Tamil Nadu will have to crack the common entrance test, at least this academic year.

Madras High Court today quashed as “void and unenforceable” the controversial legislation that abolished the exam for Plus Two students from the state board and made it mandatory for the rest.

The order came on a batch of writ petitions led by a Chennai CBSE student Nishant Ramesh, which challenged the validity of the Tamil Nadu Regulation of Admission in Professional Courses Act, 2006, brought by the Jayalalithaa regime.

The court said the act was being struck down on two grounds: a) violation of the Right to Equality enshrined in Article 14 of the Constitution; b) non-competence of the legislature to pass law in a field handled by central government legislation.

It dismissed as invalid the state’s plea that under Article 15 (5) it was empowered to make special provisions for the advancement of socially and educationally backward sections of society.

The bench of Chief Justice A.P. Shah and Justice Prabha Sridevan directed the state to “start the process of holding the CET (common entrance test) in accordance with the Medical Council of India and the All India Council for Technical Education for the academic year 2006-07 for all board students”.

The judges responded in detail to every point raised by the petitioners and the government. They pointed out that even last year an order abolishing the exam had been quashed by the high court.

They upheld a key argument of the petitioners that the controversial legislation not only put state board students in an advantageous position but was arbitrary and violated Article 14.

The court said the MCI, AICTE and Dental Council of India regulations were very clear that a common entrance test was mandatory for admissions if “a state had more than one board/university/examining body”.

Parliament had laid down exhaustive rules on the “standard manner of admissions” under the MCI and AICTE regulations, it said. “It is impermissible for the state legislature to occupy that space.”

Although the state claimed the idea was to help rural students who did not have the means to take private tuition, there were no statistical records to establish this, it said.

On the contrary, the figures showed that rural students were not affected by their CBSE and ISC colleagues. “The impugned legislation will only benefit the urban matriculates.”

The counsels for the petitioners included senior lawyers Vijayan and Nalini Chidambaram, wife of the Union finance minister.