The Supreme Court on Thursday set aside a Chandigarh High Court order making it mandatory for a candidate to secure 75 per cent marks for admission through sports quota. The condition was imposed by the PEC (Punjab Engineering College) University of Technology and the high court had upheld it. However, the Supreme Court said that the condition was "discriminatory" and fell "afoul of the equality clause" under Article 14 of the Constitution. It was hearing a petition filed by Dev Gupta, who was denied admission for not securing 75 per cent marks in his Class 12 exam.
What is a sports quota?
It is a scheme that reserves college seats for meritorious sporstpersons, with a relaxation in academic performance. Through sports quotas, the government also offers financial aid to athletes.
Sports quota is also followed in government jobs, where usually a committee issues an eligibility certificate after verifying the certificates and medals of the candidate.
What are the PEC rules?
Punjab Engineering College has allocated 2% of the seats in various categories for sportspersons. According to its brochure, the benefit will be available only to the category of students, who pass their qualifying examination, as regular students, from schools and colleges, recognised by the Chandigarh administration and situated in the Union Territory of Chandigarh.
It also lists 29 sports disciplines that will be considered for the purpose of admission against this category.
What the petitioner said?
Mr Gupta's lawyer said that the requirement to secure 75% marks defeats the objective of the sports quota since it requires sports persons to exhibit the same degree of academic excellence as general candidates.
Advocate PS Patwalia also said that such a high criterion was not set for the sports quota earlier.
The college's arguments
The respondent's lawyer said that out of the 34 students who had applied, 28 had fulfilled the eligibility criteria and 16 out of 17 seats have already been filled. He also told the Supreme Court that it is intervenes at this stage, it would result in largescale disruptions of the allocations already made.
What the Supreme Court said?
The court said the purpose of introducing the sports quota was to promote and encourage those who excelled and gained a certain degree of prescribed proficiency and achievement in defined competitive sports.
"The introduction of this quota was to promote sports, and sportsmanship in educational institutions. No doubt, the state acts within its rights to prescribe a certain minimum eligibility standard or set of criteria as the threshold requirement for admission to any particular course, given its peculiar requirements," the two-judge bench of Justice S Ravindra Bhat and Justice Aravind Kumar said.
The condition, however, cannot be such which frustrates the intent of the policy to promote sports in educational institutions, it added.