Complete Reservation for Bihar Students in Homeopathic College Unconstitutional: HC

PATNA: The Patna high court on Thursday declared the policy of the state government not to give admission to outsiders on the ten seats of post-graduation in homeopathy as unconstitutional. While setting aside the Bihar government’s clause in admission policy, the bench of Justice Chakdradhari Sharan Singh, while hearing a batch of seven writs, also ordered BCECE to re-conduct counselling for the ten seats on all India level on which admission procedure had been already completed.
The RBTS Homeopathic College in Muzaffapur, which is the sole college for study of homeopathic courses under the state government, for the first time was allotted ten seats of post-graduation in homeopathy by the ministry of Ayush, but the BCECE had denied students from outside Bihar to sit for counselling citing a clause in its prospectus, approved by state government that only students who had passed from government colleges in Bihar were eligible for admission on the ten seats. The ministry had handed over all India merit list to BCECE for conducting counselling.
One of the petitioners Priyanka Bharti’s counsel Mriganka Mauli said that as the RBTS Homeopathic College was the lone homeopathic college in the state, automatically students who were studying in the particular college were eligible for post-graduation course according to the rules of BCECE’s prospectus.
“The court declared the government policy unconstitutional on the basis of a Supreme Court’s ruling in Saurav Chaudhary case in which it had ruled that above 50% institutional preference could not be provided in reservation,” Mauli said.
He said that Bihar altogether had 52 seats for post-graduation in homeopathy and except the ten seats, rest all are with private homeopathic colleges.
Mauli said that the counselling for the ten seats had commenced on November 7 and from November 9, classes for the course had started too. “The court of has given a time frame of a fortnight from the day of pronouncement of order to conduct the re-counselling process,” Mauli said.