| The Supreme Court appears to have taken upon itself so many functions belonging to the government and its authorities that some of their arms have begun to atrophy.
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| In the vehicular pollution case, the court had to lay down the type of fuel and the norms. It had to go into the minutest details of the shifting of small units in congested areas in Delhi and Kolkata. Forest conservation rules are virtually implemented by the court in its special sittings these days.
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| Defining the rules for allotment of seats in professional colleges and setting the fee structure for different categories of candidates is another exercise that the court has undertaken in the past decade. The effort has not been very tidy and the despair of the court was expressed last week in Saurabh Chaudri vs Union of India.
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| Three judges of the court delivered separate judgements of their own. The core question was the constitutional validity of reservation whether based on domicile or institution, in the matter of admission to post-graduate courses in government-run medical colleges.
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| Ultimately, they reduced the quota for super special subjects from 75 per cent to 50 per cent for in-house candidates and opened the other half to all-India candidates. However, some of the observations of the judges, especially those of Justice A R Lakshmanan, showed the state of affairs in the field of professional education.
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| Pointing out the chaos created by the inaction of the state and Central governments, the judge said: “Every year during the admission season, several lakhs of students undergo immense suffering and harassment in seeking admission to professional courses. This is caused by uncertain policies, ambiguous procedures and inadequate information. The miseries of the students and parents are escalating year after year due to the boundless expansion in the number of professional institutions and their intake capacity, emergence of a large variety of newer disciplines and mobility of students seeking admission beyond the boundaries of their states.”
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| The students who are about to complete their high school education go through a period of acute anxiety. Their trauma begins when they search for seats in institutions of higher studies. The court said that this is caused by the “many unfair practices in admissions and devious ways of fee collection exploiting the anxiety of the students and uncertainty of procedures.”
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| Different state and central authorities take varied steps leading to severe inconsistencies. There is substantial scope for streamlining the admission process, even within the regulatory powers of the authorities, provided these issues are not dealt with on an emergency basis during the admission season but done in a coordinated and comprehensive manner ahead of time, the judgement pointed out.
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| Some 10 years ago, the Supreme Court delivered the “Unnikrishnan judgement” with the best of intentions. One of its primary objective was to end the capitation system. In an idealistic tone, it had said: “Education has never been commerce in this country. Making it one is opposed to the ethos, tradition and sense of this nation. The argument on the contrary has an unholy ring to it.”
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| However, the scheme it had laid down for admissions and fees has since been found to be flawed. An 11-judge bench of the Supreme Court ultimately overruled that decision last year.
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| The government and the statutory authorities have been mere by-standers all these years, leaving all the nitty-gritty to be sorted out by the courts. Some states have even defied the court directives and invited judicial wrath during the admission seasons.
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| The latest judgment of the Supreme Court gives a clue to the states’ reluctance to clean up the Augean stables. It says that “those who have ventured to start the new institutions are motivated by commercial interests and not by educational or social interests. Political considerations have become paramount in sanctioning colleges.”
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| In this background, the powers that be find it more convenient to pass the buck to the judiciary. When things go wrong and parents tear their hair in despair, they can conveniently point fingers at the judiciary and blame it for misplaced activism. |
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