HC Says that It Won't Exercise Article 226 for Indolent Persons

HYDERABAD: The Telangana High Court made it clear that it won’t exercise extraordinary jurisdiction under Article 226 of the Constitution to give relief to the indolent students seeking MBBS seats in the local quota, who approach the court after deadline has passed.

A division bench, comprising Chief Justice Alok Aradhe and Justice N.V. Shravan Kumar, gave the ruling while dealing with a petition by a NEET aspirant, who was declared a non-local candidate by the Kaloji Narayana Rao University for Health Sciences.

Twentynine days later, he approached the High Court seeking that he be considered a local candidate. By then the university had completed two phases of MBBS counselling.

The petitioner opined that the recent orders of the High Court regarding easing of local candidate rules to permanent residents of Telangana would apply to him.

Rejecting the contention, the bench said the orders had clearly mentioned that the relief would apply to students, who approached the court in time and not for fence-sitters who did not challenge the wrongful action.

The court maintained that the normal rule is that when a particular set of persons are given relief by the court, all other identically situated persons need to be treated alike.

“However, the aforesaid principle is subject to well recognized exceptions in the form of delay and negligence,” the bench said. The court pointed out that in the given case, admission to the MBBS course is a time-bound process and two rounds of counselling had been held. So, the normal rule cannot be applied in this case.