JOIN USAccess to professional education not largesse: Supreme Court
The Supreme Court has held that access to professional education was not a largesse (charity) but an affirmative obligation upon the state to create enabling environment for it.
"The right to pursue higher (professional) education has not been spelt out as a fundamental right in Part III of the Constitution, it bears emphasis that access to professional education is not a governmental largesse. Instead, the state has an affirmative obligation to facilitate access to education, at all levels," a bench of Justices D Y Chandrachud and M R Shah said.
The top court said this obligation assumed far greater importance for students whose background (by virtue of such characteristics as caste, class, gender, religion, disability and geographical region) imposed formidable obstacles on their path to accessing quality education.
The court directed the authorities to complete the formalities for admission of Farzana Batool and Mohammad Mehdi Waziri for admission to MBBS course at Lady Hardinge Medical College, and Maulana Azad Medical College, New Delhi here within a week.
The Union government admitted that there was no reason and justification to deny them the benefit of admission to the course after the petitioner candidates have been nominated by the Administration of the Union Territory of Ladakh for admission to the MBBS degree course under the ‘central pool’ seats set apart by the Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare.
Acting on writ petitions by the two students, the court underscored the importance of creating an enabling environment to make it possible for students such as the petitioners to pursue professional education.
It dealt with the issue so that other students who may lack resources, or simply the knowledge about legal remedies, were not deprived of education on a systemic basis.
The court also directed the authorities that all the students who have been allocated seats from the central pool through a notification issued on February 19, 2021, be granted admissions to the concerned institutions, if not already given so far, in order to obviate the hardship caused to these students.
It also asked the Union government to consider appointing a nodal officer tasked with the responsibility of ensuring that students who were duly nominated under the central pool seats were in fact admitted in their chosen course of study.