Case: Jagdish Saran and Others Vs. Union of India and Others

regard being had to over-all Indian conditions, can it be said that Delhi or the Delhi University, is backward or serves, through the medical colleges of its University, the students who will settle down to alleviate suffering in that region,Secondly, and more importantly, it is difficult to denounce or renounce the merit criterion when the selection is for post-graduate or post-doctoral courses in specialised subjects. There is no substitute for sheer flair, for creative talent, for fine-tuned performance at the difficult heights of some disciplines where the best alone is likely to blossom as the best. To sympathise mawkishly with the weaker sections by selecting sub-standard candidates, is to punish society as a whole by denying the prospect of excellence say in hospital service. Even the poorest, when stricken by critical illness, needs the attention of super- skilled specialists, not humdrum second-rates. So it is that relaxation on merit, by over-ruling equality and quality altogether, is a social risk where the stage is post- graduate or post-doctoral.32. Of course, we should not exaggerate this factor. Post- graduate studies are not all that great and demanding as to invite only geniuses.33. We cannot be scared by glorifying merit nor be hypnotised by the cult of talent, seeing as we do, crowds of M.Ds, M.Ss and their foreign analogues. Nor, indeed, are the entrance tests any but the feeblest yardsticks to measure innate capabilities. Is it not the wildest hostage to fortune to swear by marks alone which are so freakish and determined by a chancy variety of variables ? We find different modes of examining faculties in different universities, commissions and countries and may, on closer scrutiny, pick holes in the scientific basis of our entrance tests themselves. We repeat all this only to stress the limitations on the current system of selection so that we may not be swept off our feet by the elitist feeling that something sacred or scientific is being jettisoned for the sake of accommodating nitwits of backward regions institutions or classes when marks are slightly slurred over. Even so, being realists, we go by existing methodology until better modes are devised.In the light of this discussion about the know-how and know-why of reservations, what are the conclusions that emerge vis a vis the Delhi graduates ? Neither Delhi nor the Delhi University medical colleges can be designated as categories which warrant reservation. But there is one weighty circumstance which must be in our remembrance. Reservation for Delhi graduates is not that invidious because, as stated in the beg inning, the students are from families drawn from all over India. Not `sons of the soil but sons and daughters of persons who are willy nilly pulled into the capital city for reasons beyond their control. This reservation is, therefore, qualitatively different.34. There is another pathological condition affecting `medical admissions which is at the back of the desperate `satyagraha of the students and this factor tilts the scale a great deal. Counsel for the University, supported by fragmentary material pointing to a pan-Indian tendency, argued that all the country round every university bangs, bars and bolts the doors of medical admission to outsiders and if Delhi alone were to keep its doors hospitably ajar where are the Delhi graduates to go for higher studies if squeezed out by All-India competition ? If reservation is evil, the embargo everywhere must be lifted, lest evil should beget evil. So long as other universities are out of bounds for Delhi graduates, exposure to all-India competition becomes intense and prejudices their chances. This indirect, real yet heavy handicap creates an under- current of discrimination and cannot be wished away and needs to be antidoted by some percent age of reservation or other legitimate device.35. Another consideration which justifies some measure of reservation is the desire of students for institutional continuity in education.Parents, pupils and teachers will usually prefer such continuity and it has its own value.36. We recognise that institution-wise reservation is constitutionally circumscribed and may become ultra vires if recklessly resorted to. But even such rules until revised by competent authority or struck down judicially, will rule the roost. That is why we have to concede that until the signpost of `no admission for outsiders is removed from other universities and some fair percentage of seats in other universities is left for open competition the Delhi students cannot be made martyrs of the Constitution.37. Even so, `reservation must be administered in moderation, if it is to be constitutional. Some central technical institutions like the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, Delhi and Chandigarh and the Pondicherry Medical College have a much smaller fraction. Their circumstances may be different and we do not have the full facts, neither side having furnished more than fragments. Judicial surmise is too weak to be of decisional certainty. For reasons we have assigned 70% plus is too high at the post-graduate level in the half-proved circumstances. But we stop short of invalidating the rule because the facts are imperfect, the course has al ready started and the court must act only on sure ground, especially when matters of policy, socio-educational investigation and expert evaluation of variables are involved. Judges should not rush in where specialists fear to tread. We spare the impugned regulation even though we are, prima facie, sceptical about the vires thereof. To doubt is not enough to demolish. When fuller facts are placed, the court will go into this question more confidently.38. While reluctantly repelling the challenge of the petitioner we think two directions must be made in this case. If 70% reservation is on the high side and the petitioner is hopefully near `admission going by marks and reservation, it is but just that he is given a chance to do his post-graduate course. Indeed, his coming to Delhi itself was a compulsion beyond his control, as we have noted earlier.The petitioner, going by marks, deserves admission to the postgraduate degree course although he is now in the post-graduate diploma course.

Decision (1 = appeal accepted, 0 = rejected): 0

Explanation:
0[ds]A synthesis of both is where the truth lies. The key to this case, if we may anticipate ourselves, is in harmoniously blending developmental necessities of backward regions via institutionalnational considerations of everybodys equal opportunity for higher education being ensured regardless of geographical, institutional or other inhibition. We must never forget two values synthesised in our constitutional culture, as set out in theand integrity of the nation and equality of opportunity of weaker sections. Without the latter becoming a sure reality the former may be mere rhetoric !An epitome of the social background leading upto the controversy will give a hang of the case and elaboration may await a later stage. Post In dependence India has many universities with facilities for higher learning. Most of them give institutional preferences in the allocation of seats for technical courses and this tendency sometimes reaches the morbid point of total cornering of seats atlevel, especially in the coveted and competitive branches likenational demographic composition is relevant to the examination of the reservationare valuable aspects to shape policy but the court must test constitutionality and no more. To that extent alone we will weigh these factors in moulding our verdict.We will now identify the issues emerging from the matrix ofe rival contentions justify, albeit a little repetitively, the recapitulation of recent events, parochial realities and institutional behaviour, bearin on admissions to colleges in the Delhi University, with some comparative glance at others in thethis method, approximately half the number of seats were reserved for the Delhi graduates. But having regard to the figures of seats andof graduates earlier mentioned, t his did not meet the requirements of the aspirants fordegrees from Delhi. It must be remembered that Delhi is the seat of the elite, of high officials, of prosperous professionals, of rich businessmen, of important politicians and echelons of consequence and other men ofsons and daughters, already fed on superior facilities and coached in special schools beyond the reach of most other students in the rest of the country, have an appetite and opportunity for excellence in education ahead of others and wish to lap up all theseats, if possible. The cream must belong to the cream, generation to generation, may be a cynical social scientists comment,a larger number of Delhi medical graduates, relatively speaking, must be ambitiously wanting to continue their studies inmedical courses which are prized for their career potential. It is significant that these courses are not easily available elsewhere and the standards and prestige of these degrees in the Delhi University are high. Taking amedical degree thus opens up further vistas for studies abroad or employment at home. When we remember these f actors and the reduced chance for bright Delhi graduates to gain admission into the Delhicourses in the face ofcompetition, we can mildly appreciate the mood and demand of the student community for enlargement of their quota. But all grievances are not constitutional. Also, by remedying one groups misfortune other groups may be hurt. The Court can only view rights and wrongs, through the constitutional prism. The various universities show concern for their backward regions and alumni in the name of equal opportunity. But the Indian Medical Council, apprehensive of fall of standards lays stress on academic merit. This dilemma of the law between equality of opportunity and excellence of performance leads us to a demand for full facts, but, of course, we are left to speculate on many aspects of the problem because even the Delhi University and the Union of India have left us in theIndian Constitution is wedded to equal protection andArts. 14, 15 and 16 are inviolable and Art. 29(2) strikes a similar note though it does not refer to regional restrictions or reservations. Art. 15 saves the States power to make special provisions for women and children or for advancement of socially and educationally backward classes. Reservations under Art. 15(4) exist and are applied. There is no dispute about that and the whole debate has left that pattern and policy of reservation out of controversy. Wese quotas, reservations and preferences from the constitutional standpoint. The primary imperative of Arts. 14 and 15 is equal opportunity for all across the nation to attain excellenceand this has burning relevance to our times when the country is gradually being broken up into fragments by narrow domestic walls in politics, economics and education, undoing the founding faith of an undivided integrated India by surrender to lesser appeals and grosser passions. What is fundamental, as an enduring value of our polity, is guarantee to each of equal opportunity to unfold the full potential of his personalities. Anyone anywhere, humble or high, agrestic or urban, man or woman, and whatever his religion or irreligion, shall be afforded equal chance for admission to any secular educational course or school for cultural growth, training facility, speciality orliteral terms of Art. 14 do not tolerate it, the text of Art. 15 does not sanction it. Can we carve out a fresh ground of preference? Delhi University students, as such, are not an educationally backward class and, indeed,segregation or reservation has no place in the scheme of Art. 15, although social and educational destitution may be endemic in some parts of the country where a college or university may be started to remedy this glaring imbalance and reservation for those alumi for higher studies may be permissible. We will explain this further but, speaking generally, unless there is vital nexus with equal opportunity, broad validation ofreservation cannot be built on the vague ground that all other universities are practisingfact not fully proved before us either. Universality of illegality, even if the artists of discrimination are universities, cannot convert such praxis into constitutionality. Nor, indeed, can the painful circumstance that a batch of medical graduates demonstratively fasted in front of the Health Ministers house, ipso facto, legalise reservation of seats in theirhave sympathy for students, especially for those who sacrifice their comforts to claim an opportunity to takemedical degrees. We even feel that the student community often resorts to direct action of the satyagraha model when the pachydermic disposition of authorities drives them to such drastic heroics. But what ifstudents start a rival starvation exercise ? That will lead to testing the rule of law on the immolative or masochist capabilities of affected groups and not on the Articles of the Constitutional or provisions of the legislation. Protest fasting, a versatile weapon in our cultural armoury, is meant to sensitize or conscientize the soul o f the Administration when it is tooor callous to look at human problems from the angle of human justice. Beyond that, this great Gandhian technique cannot be blunted by promiscuous use, so long as democratic mechanisms are alive and not impervious to legitimate grievances and can be sparked into action not merely by sensational, though sincere, tactics like fasting unto death. While recognising, even reverencing, the role of soul force in quickening the callous conscience of authorities to grave injury and need for urgent remedy, we cannot uphold the Delhi Universitys reservation strategy merely because Government was faced with student fasts and ministers desired a compromise formula and the University bodies simply said Amen. The constitutionality of institutional reservation must be founded on facts of educational life and the social dynamics of equal opportunity Political panic does not ipso facto, make constitutional logic.Prima facie, equal marks must have equal chance for medical admissions, as urged by the practitioner. And neither university based favoured treatment nor satyagraha induced quota policy can survive the egalitarian attack. To repulse the charge, equality oriented grounds must be made out. Constitutional equality itself is dynamic, flexible, and moulded by the variables of life. For instance, if a region is educationally backward or woefully deficient in medical services, there occurs serious educational anddisparity for that human religion which must be redressed by an equality and service minded Welfare State. The purpose of such a policy is to remove the existing inequality and to promoteequality for the denizens of the backward regions. The specific strategy to ameliorate the unequal societal condition is left to the State, provided it is geared to producing equality in the quality of life of that handicapped area subject, of course, to basic recognition of individual quality and criteria ofif the State finds that only students from the backward regions, when given medical graduation, will care to serve in that area, drawn towards it by a sense of belonging, and those fromwill, on graduation, leave for the cities or their own regions, it may evolve a policy of preference or reservation for students of that University. That strategy ensures the probability of their serving the backward people for whose benefit the medical courses were opened. Such measures which make for equality of opportunity for medical education and medical service for backward human sectors may be constitutionalised even by Arts. 14 and 15. But it must be remembered that exceptions cannotthe rule itself by running riot or by making reservations as a matter of course, in every university and every course. For instance, you cannot wholly exclude meritorious candidates as that will promote substandard candidates and bring about a fall in medical competence, injurious, in the long run, to the very region. It is no blessing to inflict quacks and medical midgets on people by wholesale sacrifice of talent at the threshold. Nor can the very best be rejected from admission because that will be a national loss and the interests of no region can be higher than those of the nation. So, within these limitations, without going into excesses, there is room for play of the States policy choices.Before moving to the next aspect we may touch upon a slightly different angle which opens up a new point ofis merit or excellence ? If potential for rural service or aptitude for rendering medical attention among backward people is a criterion of merit and it, undoubtedly, is in a land of sickness and misery, neglect and penury, wails andsurely, belonging to a university catering to a deprived region is a plus point of merit. Excellence is composite and the heart and its sensitivity are as precious in the scale of educational values as the head and its creativity and social medicine for the common people is more relevant than peak performance in freak cases. Marks on this basis will take us to the same preference as reservations forcandidates. Here we are not preferring one with less marks, but adopting a holistic manner of marking linked up with backward settings, institution oriented and like considerations has somecaveat or two may be sounded even in this approach lest exception should consume the rule. The first caution is that reservation must be kept in check by the demands of competence. You cannot extend the shelter of reservation where minimum qualifications are absent. Similarly, all the best talent cannot be completely excluded by wholesale reservation. So, a certain percentage, which may be available, must be kept open for meritorious performance regardless of university, State and the like. Complete exclusion of the rest of the country for the sake of a province, wholesale banishment of proven ability to open up, hopefully, some dalit talent, total sacrifice of excellence at the altar ofthe Constitution mandates for every one equality before and equal protection of thebe fatal folly,educational technology and antinational if made a routine rule of State policy. A fair preference, a reasonable reservation, a just adjustment of the prior needs and real potential of the weak with the partial recognition of the presence of competitiveas the dynamics of social justice which animates the three egalitarian articles of the Constitution.Flowing from the same stream of equalism is another limitation. The basic medical needs of a region or the preferential push justified for a handicapped group cannot prevail in the same measure at the highest scale of speciality where the best skill or talent, must be handpicked by selecting according toChanchalas case the basis of classification was different: "in that it is neithere, but is university wise."(5) The justification forreservation was the educational need and paucity of medical service in the area where the university was set up. Certain regions poorly served with medical facilities and with few doctors needed to produce more medical men who would settle down there. Likewise, in those backward regions the absence of medical colleges effectively inhibited the needs of medical education of the local student community. The question was whether these grounds would suffice for providing reservationIn this setting, the Court observed:"Since the universities are set up for satisfying the educational needs of different areas where they are set up and medical colleges are established in those areas, it can safely be presumed that they also were so set up to satisfy the needs of medical training of those attached to those universities. In our view there is nothing undesirable in ensuring that those attached to such universities have their ambitions to have training in specialised subjects, like medicine, satisfied through colleges affiliated to their own universities. Such a basis for selection has not the disadvantage ofse selection as any student from any part of the state can pass the qualifying examination in any of the three universities irrespective of the place of his birth or residence, Further, the rules confer a discretion on the selection committee to admit outsiders upto 20% of the total available seats in any one of these colleges, i.e. those who have passed the equivalent examination held by any other university not only in the State but also elsewhere inprinciple underlying Art. 15(4) is that a preferential treatment can validly be given because the socially and educationally backward classes need it, so that in course of time they stand in equal position with the more advanced sections of the society. It would not in any way be improper if that principle were also to be applied to those who are handicapped but do not fall under Art.conclusion that we reach from this ruling which adverts to earlier procedents on the point is thatpreferential treatment may still be consistent with the rule of equality of opportunity where it is calculated to correct an imbalance or handicap and permit equality in the largerextensive excursion is necessitated by the subtle tendency of advantage groups to exploit propositions applicable to disabled categories to good account. Now, let us look at the raw realities of the Delhi University medical graduates and their claim for larger reservation for M.D. and M.S. Facts, and only facts, must be the guide, of course, within the framework of Part III, and this Court has to play the role not only of the sentinel on the qui vive but also of t he hound of heaven, not merely watch but chase, to set things right if any constitutional wrong has been committed. So we must enquire whether 70% reservation for Delhi graduates which is prima facie discriminatory can be extricated by any amelioratory constitutional logic or ethic implicit in Arts. 14 and 15. We have set out the parameters within which alone reservation ismust go to the roots of the creed of equality and here the case of State of Kerala v. N. M. Thomas(1) has critical relevance. That decision dealt with the Scheduled Castes and Art. 16 and certain facilities other than reservation. But the core reasoning has crucial significance in all cases of protective discrimination. The process of equalisation and benign discrimination are integral, and not antagonistic, to the principle of equality. In a hierarchical society with an indelible feudal stamp and incurable actual inequality, it is sophistry to argue that progressive measures to eliminate group disabilities and promote collective equality are anathema on the score that every individual has entitlement on pure merit of marks. This narrow unsocial pedantry subverts the seminal essence of equal opportunity even for those who are humble and handicapped. Meritocracy cannot displace equality when the utterly backward masses labour under group disabilities. So we may weave those special facilities into the web of equality which, in an equitable setting, provide for the weak and promote their levelling up so that, in the long run, the community at large may enjoy a general measure of real equal opportunity. So we hold, even apart from Art. 15(3) and (4), that equality is not negated or neglected where special provisions are geared to the larger goal of the disabled getting over their disablement consistently with the general good and individual merit. Indeed, Art. 14 implies all this, in its wider connotation, and has to inform the interpretation of Art.e classification formedical education is shown to be relevant and reasonable and the differential has a nexus to the larger goal of equalisation of educational opportunities the vice of discrimination may not invalidate theso, what is fundamental is equality, not classification. What is basic is equal opportunity, for each according to his ability, not artificial compartmentalisation and institutional apartheidisation, using the mask of handicaps. We cannot contemplate as consistent with Art. 14 a clanish exclusivism based upon a particular university, withoutthe constitutional principles and limitations are clear and the norms are belighted by the precedents but their application to the specific situation is an exacting task. The burden, when protective discrimination promotional of equalisation is pleaded, is on the party who seeks to justify the ex facie deviation fromlearned Attorney General frankly admitted that student agitation, without more, could not validate reservation and that excessive reservation was an obvious inequality. Nor, indeed, is it a good plea that illegal reservation is being practised by other universities and the Delhi University is forced to act illegally inLawlessness, under our system, is corrected by the law, not bySo it is strange for the Delhi University to say our disorderly behaviour is orderly because other universities behave similarly. Once these misguided defences of direct action by students or reprisals against other universities are brushed aside, we come to grips with the realcontention deserves close examination, not summary rejection.The mechanics of merit measurement is simple. All applicants, whichever the University from where they have taken M.B.B.S. degree, must apply for a common entrance test. Theof merit is the marks obtain ed. Thereafter 70% of the seats is allotted to Delhi graduates and the balance 30% is selected from out of all the remaining applicants, Delhi graduates included. So much so, Delhi graduates get much more than 70% of the total seats. Although the stage of application of reservation may bear upon the effective quantum of advantage, the principal question is as to whether a minimum of 70% for the Delhi graduate alone is not far too excessive, based on extraneous agitational factors and essentially contradicting Arts. 14 andequality of opportunity for every person in the country is the constitutional guarantee, a candidate who gets more marks than another is entitled to preference for admission. Merit must b e the test when choosing the best, according to this rule of equal chance for equal marks. This proposition has greater importance when we reach the higher levels of education likecourses. After all, top technological expertise in any v ital field like medicine is nations human asset without which its advance and development will be stunted. The role of high grade skill or special talent may be less at the lesser levels of education, jobs and disciplines of social inconsequence, but more at the higher levels of sophisticated skills and strategic employment. To devalue merit at the summit is to temporise with the countrys development in the vital areas of professional expertise. In science and technology and other specialised fields of developmental significance, to relax lazily or easily in regard to exacting standards of performance may be running a grave national risk because in advanced medicine and other critical departments of higher knowledge, crucial to material progress, the people of India should not be denied the best the nations talent lying latent can produce. If the best potential in these fields isfor populist considerations garbed as reservations, the victims, in the long run, may be the people themselves. Of course, this unrelenting strictness in selecting the best may not be so imperative at other levels where a broad measure of efficiency may be good enough and what is needed is merely to we ed out the worthless.Coming to brasstacks, deviation from equal marks will meet with approval only if the essential conditions set out above are fulfilled. The class which enjoys reservation must be educationally handicapped. The reservation must be geared to getting over the handicap. The rationale of reservation must be in the case of medical students, removal of regional or class inadequacy or like disadvantage. The quantum of reservation should not be excessive or societally injurious measured by thecompetency of thes. A host of variables influence the quantification of the reservation. But one factor deserves great emphasis. The higher the level of the speciality the lesser the role of reservation. Such being the pragmatics and dynamics of social justice and equal rights, let us apply the tests to the case onhave two weighty differentiating factors here. Delhi is in no sense an educationally or economically backward human region, measured against the rest of our country. The students of Delhi, who are likely to seek admission to medical colleges, belong to classes higher in the scale than in most parts of India. As explained earlier the presence of huge central administrative establishments and higher echelons of the public services, members in numbers of the political aristocracy, thanks to Delhi being the seat of Parliament, countless executives clustering around big business and industrial houses and offices and many educational, research and other institutions, professional organisations, the Supreme Court, the High Court, and their natural human concomitants in the upperscale, make Delhi and the Delhi University the cynosure of the privileged species in a land ofpenury. Of course, like in any megalopolis of a dev eloping country, slums and other symptoms of deprivation show up and the desperately poor denizens below the visibility line unbiquitously abound. But they are not the potential candidates for medical admission or service and cannot be used as `alibi for reservation. In what sense, regard being had toIndian conditions, can it be said that Delhi or the Delhi University, is backward or serves, through the medical colleges of its University, the students who will settle down to alleviate suffering in that region,Secondly, and more importantly, it is difficult to denounce or renounce the merit criterion when the selection is foral courses in specialised subjects. There is no substitute for sheer flair, for creative talent, forperformance at the difficult heights of some disciplines where the best alone is likely to blossom as the best. To sympathise mawkishly with the weaker sections by selectingcandidates, is to punish society as a whole by denying the prospect of excellence say in hospital service. Even the poorest, when stricken by critical illness, needs the attention of superskilled specialists, not humdrumSo it is that relaxation on merit, byequality and quality altogether, is a social risk where the stage is postWe repeat all this only to stress the limitations on the current system of selection so that we may not be swept off our feet by the elitist feeling that something sacred or scientific is being jettisoned for the sake of accommodating nitwits of backward regions institutions or classes when marks are slightly slurred over. Even so, being realists, we go by existing methodology until better modes are devised.In the light of this discussion about thehy of reservations, what are the conclusions that emerge vis a vis the Delhi graduates ? Neither Delhi nor the Delhi University medical colleges can be designated as categories which warrant reservation. But there is one weighty circumstance which must be in our remembrance. Reservation for Delhi graduates is not that invidious because, as stated in the beg inning, the students are from families drawn from all over India. Not `sons of the soil but sons and daughters of persons who are willy nilly pulled into the capital city for reasons beyond their control. This reservation is, therefore, qualitativelyise reservation is constitutionally circumscribed and may become ultra vires if recklessly resorted to. But even such rules until revised by competent authority or struck down judicially, will rule the roost. That is why we have to concede that until the signpost of `no admission for outsiders is removed from other universities and some fair percentage of seats in other universities is left for open competition the Delhi students cannot be made martyrs of theso, `reservation must be administered in moderation, if it is to be constitutional. Some central technical institutions like the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, Delhi and Chandigarh and the Pondicherry Medical College have a much smaller fraction. Their circumstances may be different and we do not have the full facts, neither side having furnished more than fragments. Judicial surmise is too weak to be of decisional certainty. For reasons we have assigned 70% plus is too high at thelevel in thee spare the impugned regulation even though we are, prima facie, sceptical about the vires thereof. To doubt is not enough to demolish. When fuller facts are placed, the court will go into this question morereluctantly repelling the challenge of the petitioner we think two directions must be made in this case. If 70% reservation is on the high side and the petitioner is hopefully near `admission going by marks and reservation, it is but just that he is given a chance to do hiscourse. Indeed, his coming to Delhi itself was a compulsion beyond his control, as we have noted earlier.The petitioner, going by marks, deserves admission to the postgraduate degree course although he is now in theWe are disturbed by the tendency to wall of each university as an insulated island of education, mindless of the integrated unity and equal opportunity which are an inalienable part of our constitutional value system. There is good reason for reservation in many cases but the promiscuous, even profligate application of an exception as a rule of educational life by forward cities and universities will boomerang on the nation in the long run. The Union of India has a special responsibility to ensure that in higher education provincialism does not erode the integrity of India. Who lives if India dies, is a poignant interrogation with cultural projections in many dimensions which our administrators are not, we hope, innocent off: Mutations in reservations in other universities need not await litigation but can be undertaken before the court process is set in motion. The dialectic of constitutional protection in the dynamic context of equality in a developing country has been presented by us at some repetitive length so that the voyage ofmay not suffer from navigational errors.The Indian Medical Council is the statutory body at the national level whose functional obligations include setting standards for as well as regulation and coordination of medical education. What with a growing number of universities with divergent settings, standards and goals and a motley crowd of students with diverse academic and social backgrounds and ambitions, the prescription and invigilation of flexible yet principled norms regulating the entrance into medical courses and training of medical graduates at various levels of specialization are a demanding and dynamic task. The I.M.A. cannot be a silent spectator or a static instrument but must initiate, activist fashion, steps to make Indian medical education a meaning asset to the nations healing and hospital resources and a discipline with broad uniformity and assured standard. The Central Government, witness to a deteriorating situation, cannot but act to negate the confusing trend of fall in quality and conflict amongJ. I have had the benefit of reading the judgment prepared by my learned brother V. R. Krishna Iyer and while I agree with him that the writ petition should be dismissed, I propose to state my ownvalidity of a reservation of 70% of the seats in theclasses by the Delhi University in favour of its own medical graduates is assailed in this writ petition. The basis of the reservation is the consideration that the candidate for admission to theclasses is a medical graduate of the same University. No question of backward classes, scheduled castes and scheduled tribes, is involved. Criteria pertinent to reservation concerning them are, it seems to me, not relevant at all. Nor strictly is the test requiring a territorial nexus the University does not insist that the candidate should hail from any particular region or State for the purpose of the 70% reservation. The relationship is entirely institutional those who have graduated from the medical colleges run by the Delhi University are favoured for admission to the postgraduate classes. In my opinion, there is sufficient validity in that consideration. It is not beyond reason that a student who enters a medical college for his graduate studies and pursues them for the requisite period of years should prefer on graduation to continue in the same institution for hisstudies. There is the strong argument of convenience, of stability and familiarity with an educational environment which in different parts of the country is subject to varying economic and psychological pressures. But much more than convenience is involved. There are all the advantages of a continuing frame of educational experience in the same educational institution. It must be remembered that it is not an entirely different course of studies which is contemplated; it is a specialised and deeper experience in what has gone before. The student has become familiar with the teaching techniques and standards of scholarship, and has adjusted his responses and reactions according. The continuity of studies ensures a higher degree of competence in the assimilation of knowledge and experience. Not infrequently some of the same staff of Professors and Readers may lecture to theclasses also. Over theyears the teacher has come to understand the particular needs of the student, where he excels and where he needs an especial encouragement in the removal of deficiencies. In my judgment, there is good reason in an educational institution extending a certain degree of preference to its graduate for admission to its post graduate classes. The preference is based on a reasonable classification and bears a just relationship to the object of the education provided in the postgraduate classes. The concept of equality codified in our constitutional system is not violated. It has been said sometimes that classification contradicts equality. To my mind, classification is a feature o f the very core of equality. It is a vital concept in ensuring equality, for those who are similarly situated alone form a class between themselves, and the classification is not vulnerable to challenge if its constituent basis is reasonably related to achieving the object of the concerned law. An institutional preference of the kind considered here does not offend the constitutional guarantee of equality.But the question really is: Is the degree of reservation excessive ? Is 70% too much ? Too excessive a reservation could result in preference to graduate candidates of severely limited aptitude and competence over meritorious candidates from other institutions whose exclusion could result in aborting a part of our national talent. The determining factor, it appears to me, is the measure of reciprocity prevailing between the different educational institutions in India regarding the availability of admission to graduates of other institutions. It can hardly be supposed that if the medical graduates of the Delhi University are shut out from adequate consideration for admission to thecourses of other institutions merely because they did not graduate from those institutions they should not think it unjust that the hospitality of their own University to outside medical graduates leaves insufficient provision for them. Not to be able to takestudies at all implies t he termination of their medical studies. This is a problem which can be tackled only on a national level, with all Universities and other medical institutions coming together around a common table with the object of fashioning out a mutual reasonable quota reservation. A wise andexercise, eschewing narrow parochial considerations, is called for. It is only by a joining of hands across the entire nation that a suitable and enduring solution can be evolved and the turbulence which disturbs the student body set atlearned brother has referred to the considerable attraction which an educational institution in New Delhi exerts over students from other parts of the country. I con fess I do not share the view entirely. So much, I think, depends on the choice of a particular subject or course of studies by the candidate. And medical course are not all necessarily to be found only in New Delhi. They are located in other parts of India and some of those