The State government of Tamil Nadu has passed orders for reserving 50 percent of the seats to postgraduate and super speciality medical courses in all government medical colleges. The seats are reserved for doctors who are serving in government hospitals. The decision has been given after a long-drawn legal battle and in spite of objections from the Central government.

According to the orders that were issued on Saturday and was made public on Monday, the reservation in post graduate super specialty courses start from this year itself. In post-graduation courses (i.e. MD, MS and MDS), the reservation will start to be implemented from next year.

One of the orders said that out of the 50 percent of the seats that are under the State quota, half of them will be allocated exclusively to in-service candidates who are serving in government healthcare institutions in Tamil Nadu. The remaining seats will be assigned to the open category, both service and non-service candidates. The remaining 50 percent of the available seats will go to the All India Quota, which will be filled by the union government separately. The seats will be filled up based on the marks that are obtained in the NEET-PG examination with eligible incentive marks as per the notification by the government.

In the meantime, the Madras High Court has closed a case based on the submissions by the State that it had issued orders reserving seats for government doctors already. In a statement, the opposition leader MK Stalin had raised concerns on the existing 69 percent caste-based reservation policy that is not being followed in the sub-quota being created for government doctors. This reservation had served as a strong incentive for doctors to be able to serve in government hospitals. It got disrupted in 2017, as the Medical Council of India modified the regulations by prohibiting such reservations which has ledto protests from government doctors.

The Supreme Court on 31st August had allowed the State to reserve seats for government doctors, while the State and the government doctors had lost their initial legal battles.

The Centre on 17th October said that it was against this reservation in a correlated case that was pending before the Madras High Court. The State government has continued its stand on this matter and had issued two orders to give effect to iton Saturday.

Source: The New Indian Express