Dr. A. Sadeshkumar vs The Secretary, P.G. Selection Committee and The Director of Medical Education

AR. Lakshmanan, J.—The Writ Appeal has been filed by the writ Petitioner against the order of Shivaraj Patil, J. dated 22.11.1995 in W.P. No. 9776 of 1995, dismissing the writ petition.

The Appellant filed the writ petition to call for the records relating to the Selection List dated 11.6.1995 for the M.D.S. Course for the year 1995-96 conducted by the 1st Respondent and to quash the same and further direct the 1st Respondent to select the Appellant for the M.S.D. Course for the year 1995-96.

The main grievance of the Appellant appears to be that the rule of reservation has not been followed in considering and selecting the candidates. The Appellant has also raised other pleas. The writ petition was resisted by the Respondents by filing counter affidavit. Shivaraj Patil, J., by order dated 22.11.1995 dismissed the writ petition on the ground that the Appellant has not secured the required marks, that he is placed at Serial No. 151 in the merit list out of 259 candidates and placed at Serial No. 6 out of 13 Scheduled Caste candidates and hence he has not been selected and that he had no chance of selection "even if rule of reservation was applied. In view of these facts, the learned Judge has not decided the issue raised by the Appellant in regard to the rule of reservation. The learned Judge has decided the matter on merits and rejected the plea of the Appellant. Aggrieved by the said order, the present writ appeal has been filed.

It is not in dispute that there are 14 seats for the Speciality course in M.D.S. for the year 1995-96. Those 14 seats are divided among seven Specialities. Each Speciality has only two seats, one seat for Service and one for open category. Hence, 18% of the two seats comes to 0.36% and therefore, as rightly contended by the learned Counsel for the Respondent, no seat is allotted to the Scheduled Caste candidate separately following the communal rotation as the percentage is below 0.5 in Scheduled Caste category and as the number of seats is less than four, the candidates are selected only according to the marks obtained by them in the merit list. The Appellant has applied for code No. 57 i.e., oral and Maxillio Facial Surgery and Code No. 61 i.e., Prosthodontic. From the list produced it is seen that the following two candidates have been selected on merits.

Oral surgery: 1. Mr. Gopinath in OC category having secured 52.02 marks; and

Sureshkumar in Service category having secured 48.35 marks.

It is also seen from the records that the Appellant has secured 29.88 and he stands 151/259 in the merit list. Further, in Code No. 61, one Uditha Sankarayan belonging to OC category having secured 50.04 marks has been selected and Neeraja, a Service candidate having secured 50.32 marks has been selected. It is also contended by the learned Counsel for the Respondents that the said Neeraja had applied for M.D.S. course with four choices. The first choice is Code No. 62, the second choice is Code No. 63, the third choice is Code No. 58 and the fourth choice is Code No. 59. As per the regulations, a candidate is supposed to give only two choices. Since she had given four choices, the Selection Committee struck down the last two choices and ought to have fed the first two choices in the computer. But the third and fourth choices were fed in the computer instead of the first two choices. Due to the said inadvertent error, the said Neeraja was not selected on merits in the third and fourth choices. When the Selection Committee noticed the error in not feeding the first two choices in the computer wherein the candidate would have been selected as per merit, the candidate requested the Selection Committee to allot her in Code No. 61 as she stood first in the Service category in the said course and since no candidate in service applied for the said category. Hence, she was allotted in the Service category in Code No. 61. Had the Selection Committee fed in to the computer Neeraja''s first two chocies, she would have been selected in the said course on merit. She was not selected to the said course due to the inadvertent wrong feeding in the computer. Hence, on her request she was allotted the seat for the aforesaid reasons.

Even assuming that the said Neeraja had not been selected, the Appellant could not have succeeded in getting the seat in the said Speciality as, even on merits, he stands at 151st place out of 239 candidates. Therefore, the grievance expressed by the Appellant that he ought to have been selected cannot at all be accepted We are of the view that the Respondents have followed the procedure in accordance with the regulations laid down in this regard.

It is also not out of place to mention herein that the Appellant stands at the 6th place out of 13 Scheduled Caste candidates in the merit list in the M.D.S. course. Even otherwise, the Appellant is not entitled to be selected as prayed for. The contention raised by Mr. S. Duraiswami in regard to the rule of reservation cannot at all be accepted in view of the Division Bench, judgment of this Court comprising of K.S. Bakthavatsalam and D. Raju, JJ. in the decision reported in D. Balasubramanian v. State of Tamil Nadu 1993 Writ L.R. 925. After considering the various decisions covering the field, the learned Judges said that the percentage of reservation has to be wroked out with reference to each branch and not by taking the total number of seats together. The Supreme Court in the decision reported in Smt. Chetana Dilip Motghare Vs. Bhide Girls Education Society, Nagput and others, has also held that the principles of reservation do not apply to an isolated post. One of us (AR Lakshmanan, J.) sitting single in the case reported in P.R. Chockalingam Vs. The Director of Tourism, Government of Tamil Nadu and Others, has also taken a similar view. That case relates to the reservation of candidates for employment from among the Backward community. Only one post was available for being filed up. Following the judgment reported in Chakradhar Paswan Vs. State of Bihar and Ors, and the Full Bench judgment of the Karnataka High Court in Dr. Rajkumar v. Gulbarga University AIR 990 Kar 320, this Court held that when there is only one post, the rule of reservation cannot be applied.

For all the foregoing reasons, we are in complete agreement with the opinion expressed by the learned single Judge. The Writ Appeal fails and is dismissed. No costs.