Kaloji varsity disregards Telangana HC CJ's directive

Hyderabad: In utter disregard to the Telangana High Court, the Kaloji Narayana Rao University of Health Sciences (KNRUHS) ignored to comply with Chief Justice Hima Kohli’s directive to file a counter affidavit in a case pertaining to an MBBS admission row.

The Chief Justice, while hearing a petition filed by two students in Writ Petition (WP) 437/2021, asked the KNRUHS to file a counter by February 11 and posted the case for Friday for final hearing. The university authorities, however, chose not to file any counter.

When contacted to question the reasons for not complying with the directions of the High Court, Vice-Chancellor Dr B. Karunakar Reddy and Registrar Dr D. Praveen Kumar chose not to respond.

Two medical students, G. Apoorva and A. Harshita, had filed a case questioning the counselling procedure of the varsity, which allowed less meritorious students, majority of whom are from Andhra Pradesh, in the otherwise meritorious “unreserved open category”. This resulted in an equal number of students from Telangana losing seats in the local category.

Both the Telugu states initially did not join the All-India quota, but later allotted 15 per cent seats each to the national pool. For the remaining 85 per cent seats, the two states have been mandated to follow the Presidential Order, as per the AP Reorganisation Act, 2014.

Accordingly, the KNRUHS should fill 15 per cent “unreserved open category” with meritorious students irrespective of region, Telangana, Andhra or Rayalaseema. The varsity must fill the remaining 85 per cent only with local students of Telangana.

The petitioners’ counsel Vedula Srinivas explained to the Bench that in any phase, irrespective of students applying for a subsequent phase or not, the merit order should always be such that top meritorious students should occupy the unreserved open category. The university strictly implemented this provision in the first phase, but violated it in subsequent phases, he argued.

A division bench, comprising Chief Justice Hima Kohli and Justice M. S. Ramachandra Rao had, on January 8, directed the petitioners’ counsel to implead 43 students from Andhra Pradesh, who according to the petitioners, are ineligible to get admission in medical colleges in Telangana.

The petitioners urged the university to provide the list of 43 students but the varsity ignored the request. Following their university’s defiance of the Court order, the petitioners filed an additional affidavit, informing the court of their inability to find details of 43 students.

The petitioners appealed to the court to dispense with impleading of those students.