The Madras High Court has directed the Puducherry government to do justice to the Backward Tribes in its territory by providing reservations for admission to medical courses.

“It is the responsibility of the Puducherry government to step in such a situation and to extend an arm over those communities, namely Backward Tribes, and ensure that they are not left behind in the race when a reservation is sought and when they have particularly scored the eligible marks in the NEET examination. There is no justification in not considering them in any of the categories for admission to MBBS course,” Justice C V Karthikeyan said.

The judge was allowing writ petitions from M Hemalatha and another person, who belonged to the ‘Kattunayakan’ community, recently. They prayed for a direction to the authorities concerned in Puducherry to admit them to the first-year medical course for the present academic year.

The judge noted that originally from the Most Backward Caste, taking into consideration the social and economic backward class of the Tribes among them, a classification of ‘Backward Tribe’ was created, consisting of five separate categories. Among the five categories, the Irular community was thereafter again considered to be categorised as “Scheduled Tribes”. 

This left the other four Backward Tribes high and dry. They could not be fitted in either as Most Backward Community since they had sub-classified from that and they could not be classified as Scheduled Tribes since they had not been moved over to Scheduled Tribes like the Irular and also cannot be categorised as Scheduled Caste since they are a distinct category called Backward Tribes. 

The petitioners, therefore, could not fit in any of the reserved categories as announced under the Medical Counseling Committee which recognised Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribes alone. They had not taken into consideration the existence of Backward Tribes in the Union Territory of Puducherrry. 

When there is a vacancy in the Scheduled Tribe category, it is not filled up by the Backward Tribe, but rather moved over to the Scheduled Caste and then moved over to the Unreserved Category. This creates a situation where the candidates from Backward Tribes are not recognised as being eligible to opt for any of the reserved categories. There is thus no reservation provided to pursue their dream of studying in any of the professional courses, particularly the medical profession courses, the judge said.

He directed the Puducherrry government to fill up the vacancies by including the petitioners as candidates under the category of Backward Tribes in the two vacancies under the Scheduled Tribe category for the MBBS undergraduate course.