FYJC admissions: Consider withdrawing decision on quota in minority institutions, HC tells Maharashtra govt
After the court's query, the state government lawyer submitted that it may be possible to withdraw the clause in the impugned May 6 Government Resolution (GR) and that she would take instructions from higher authorities and inform the court about the same on Thursday.
A bench of Justices Makarand S Karnik and Nitin R Borkar was hearing batch of by the Maharashtra Association of Minority Educational Institutions, two minority colleges in Solapur and those from South Mumbai, including Jai Hind, KC, HR and St Xavier's colleges, challenging the GRs concerned and terming them 'arbitrary' and 'imposed without any authority of law'.
The association cited various past judgements in similar cases and argued that the minority institutions are not required to maintain social reservations.
According to the established practice followed until the previous academic year, 45 per cent of the total intake in minority institutions was kept open to all students, regardless of category, after allocating 50 per cent for the respective minority community and 5 per cent for the management quota. However, from this year, the FYJC admission portal showed that SC/ST/OBC reservations are being applied to those 45 per cent seats, which led to confusion and controversy in FYJC admissions for the academic year 2025-26.
After Government Pleader Neha Bhide submitted that the GR was issued to bring uniformity in online FYJC admissions, the bench said that in 2019 similar GR was withdrawn by the government.
'Why did you (state government) bring minority institutions? It should not be difficult to withdraw. Why do you not talk to officers and withdraw this. Every time you do not need order from us when things are so apparent. It can be a bona fide mistake. Issue a corrigendum. Solve the problem. If not, we are here (to hear pleas and pass order),' Justice Karnik orally remarked.
Bhide said that while withdrawing the entire GR was not possible, 'it is possible that clause 11 can be removed'. The court asked her to take instructions from high-level officials and inform the decision on Thursday, when the matter will be heard next.
Clause 11 in the May 6 GR issued by state's school education department stated, 'If admissions are lower than the intake capacity in minority quota, admissions can be given as per interchanging between linguistic and religious minority groups. Even after that, if seats remain vacant, those surrendered vacant seats will be filled based on the centralised admission process where all social and parallel reservations are applicable.'
While colleges claimed that the GR pertained to left-over seats in minority quota, government officials said it implied that social reservation will be applicable to all open (non-minority) seats in minority-trust run colleges. Thereafter, as per state government, it issued corrective GR on June 2, which implied social reservation to all open seats in minority colleges.
The Association, through its writ plea, sought court's directive to authorities to take immediate steps to correct/update the online admission portal for class 11 admissions for the member institutions in Maharashtra. It said the same should be done by deleting/removing the social reservation quota (SC/ST/OBC Reservation quota) and updating/rectifying the in-house and management quota as per the May 6 Government Resolution (GR) like quota and seat distribution followed in Academic Year 2024-25. It sought that the concerned clause be declared arbitrary and unconstitutional and the same be set aside.
On June 10, the government issued a new corrective GR which brought back the same sentence along with additional inputs from the May 6 GR.
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