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Court judgements: Calcutta High Court

Education

1. The Deputy Secretary (Mart), Dept. Health & Family Welfare, Government Of West Bengal v. Sanchita Biswas & Others
(2000) 1 CHN 451
Writ Petition No. 16653/1997, M.A.T No.3105/1998, C.A.N No.7514/1998
Calcutta High Court
Judge: S.N.Bhattacharjee, J

Fact: Sanchita Biswas, a physically handicapped candidate appeared in the Joint Entrance Examination of 1997 for admission to Medical Colleges in Calcutta. But she was unsuccessful in clearing the Entrance Examination. After the examination was over the government reserved eight seats for hill candidates along with other category reservations but no seat was reserved for physically handicapped persons. So the respondent filed a writ petition mentioning that reservations made to hill candidates and donor’s nominees without giving reservation to physically handicapped persons are violative of Articles 14, 15, 21 and 41 of the constitution. The court directed the concerned authority to prepare a special list for the physically handicapped candidates appeared for this examination in 1996-97 and give reservation for three per cent of the total intake of students from this special list. The authorities challenged this court order by filing the present appeal. They argued that state government providing reservation to hill people on the basis that it would cater the medical needs of hill people and was also on the recommendation from minority commission. The writ petition could not have been allowed after having participated in the selection process in which the respondent was unsuccessful.

Held: In the prescribed form appearing at the Joint Entrance Examination for Medical Stream there is a space to indicate whether the candidate is physically handicapped. After indicating in the affirmative the petitioner sat for the examination reasonably expecting some protective leniency in favour of her. But the authorities failed to provide reservation under constitutional and statutory obligation of three percent reservation to the physically handicapped persons but hastly reserve a few seats for hill candidates without any obligation, statutory or constitutional responsibility. So the present appeal is dismissed and court cannot find any committed errors in the rulings, which appealed for.

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