Arshpreet Kaur and Others vs State of Punjab and Others

Sanjay Kishan Kaul, C.J.—The appellants were seeking admission to MBBS/BDS courses and filed a Civil Writ Petition as they could not get admission on the basis of their merit. Both the appellants are carrying on their education in BDS course. The first issue raised by the appellants was qua the manner of reservation carried out for the Scheduled Caste category. This is so as the appellants were claiming admission as the wards of the terrorist and riot affected persons which was horizontal reservation while the reservation for scheduled caste category was a vertical reservation. The plea of the appellants was accepted in view of an earlier Division Bench judgment of this Court and as a result of the same the seats under the terrorist and riot affected persons category increased from six to seven. However, that did not still give admission to the appellants.

The second limb of the submissions was based on the reservation made for terrorist affected persons as per Clause 15(A)(vi) which reads as under:--

Reservation

Reservation policy reconsidered in the light of Hon''ble High Court judgment dated 10.12.2012 in LPA No. 1749 of 2012 in CWP No. 14569. A. For Government Medical/Dental College.

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The submission of the appellants was that it has only the progenies of the persons who have been displaced on account of terrorism/riots who would be entitled to the benefit and not the grand children. In this behalf, reliance was placed on the Full Bench judgment of this Court in Pawanpreet Kaur Vs. State of Punjab and Others, .

The learned Single Judge considered the aforesaid plea in the context of the category codes. The reservation for the wards of persons killed in terrorist actions is in category Code No. 19 while that of the wards of terrorist affected persons are in Category Code No. 20.

Learned counsel for the appellants emphasized before the learned Single Judge and before us also that the categories Code No. 19 and 20 require an identical Certificate to be furnished by the candidate while the certificate in the case of category No. 30 dealing with the children/grand children of freedom fighters is different, to contend that where the grand children were required to be included format certificate was accordingly drawn and thus categories No. 19 and 20 should be treated at par.

Learned Single Judge was, however, not persuaded by this judgment and while rejecting this plea relied on the fact that the codes were different for categories No. 19 and 20 and the judgment of the Full Bench of this Court dealt with Category Code No. 19. It is not in issue that Full Bench judgment dealt with the case of the wards of the persons killed in terrorist actions and in that case it was held that the benefit would be available to the children and not the grand children. The learned Single Judge opined that while dealing with the terrorist/riot affected/displaced persons both children and grand children are eligible. Learned counsel for the appellants seeks to draw our attention to the decision in Civil Writ Petition No. 18374 of 2013 decided on 27.09.2013 by the same learned Single Judge where the grand children have been held not to be entitled to reservation but then again this is a case of clause 15(1)(vi)(a) dealing with the persons killed in terrorist action and not of 15(1)(vi)(b) dealing with the terrorist/riot affected/displaced persons. If they were to be dealt with in identical manner then possibly there was no need to carve out separate category code making category 19 applicable to first and category 20 to the latter. In our view, most important aspect, as conceded by learned counsel for the appellants, is the stand of the authorities who were the authors of the brochure which is the same as adopted in the opinion of the learned Single Judge. These reservations are not statutory in character unlike the reservation for SC/ST persons or displaced persons. The reservations have been created by the Administrative Authorities to assist certain categories of people and such reservation policy has received the attention of the High Court as is apparent from Clause 15 dealing with the reservation itself. Thus, if there was any two views possible as to how such reservation through administrative order would work, the interpretation put forth by the drafting authorities must be given a due weightage.

We are thus of the view that the impugned order does not call for any interference.

Dismissed.

Stay application is also dismissed.