PANAJI
Finally after a long drawn battle and the High Court's intervention which had struck down an earlier reservation policy, the State's reserved categories are likely to get an aggregate 41% quota in admissions for post-graduate courses at the Goa Medical College from the upcoming academic year.
The State government decided to implement its regular 27% reservation for Other Backward Classes (OBCs), 12% for Scheduled Tribes and 2% for Scheduled Castes in Post Graduate courses, hitherto devoid of any reservation as the Bombay High Court had struck down an earlier reservation policy.
The new notification was issued recently with instructions to the GMC Dean to send the reservation proposal to the Public Health Department for seeking government approval. It also stated that the roster for reservations will be prepared by the Social Welfare department.
The recommendation for reservations was made to the government by an expert committee which was headed by the Health Secretary in consultation with Advocate General Devidas Pangam.
It may be recalled that the Bombay High Court at Goa had struck down the 2020 decision of the State Government to implement reservations for post-graduate seats at the GMC, citing the arbitrary fashion in which it was notified, merely based on recommendations of the State's SC/ST and OBC Commissions.
In their 95-page judgment, Justices M S Sonak and M S Jawalkar had said that such a decision to provide reservation quota in post-graduate courses at the GMC ought to have been preceded by "proper" said well thought out process which accounted for a plethora of issues raised in multiple decisions of the Supreme Court of India on the subject.
The Bench also pointed out in the judgement that the rules for admission to post-graduate courses both at GMC and the Goa Dental College, which encompassed only the merit consideration, had never been amended to factor in the reservation policy and dilute the merit criterion.
