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A full bench at Bombay High Court observed that reimbursement of fee is a facet of affirmative action, while dealing with a case involving Maharashtra government's policy of 2013 to grant fee reimbursement to only engineering students from Scheduled Caste communities who study in colleges which are part of the Central Allotment Process (CAP). The court declared the government policy as unreasonable, artificial and arbitrary.
The case was referred to the full bench after two conflicting judgments were given by two division benches in the cases Association of Management of Unaided Engineering Colleges v. State of Maharashtra (2014) and Bapu Supadu Thorat v. State of Maharashtra (2015).
The petition was filed by some students from a linguistic minority institute, which had its own admission procedure, different from that of CAP. The procedure is also recognised by the government and monitored by a government constituted committee.
The court observed that the fee reimbursement is an affirmative action to uplift Scheduled Castes and Scheduled tribes. Hence, any artificial distinction of CAP and Non-CAP students defeats the purpose of fee reimbursement policy.
The court further stated that mere admission in the educational institutions is not enough as many of them drop out in the middle due to paucity of resources. The government policy is need based rather than merit based therefore no distinction can be made as there is no proof that Non-CAP students are less meritorious.
The government submitted that the policy was made due to paucity of funds, but the court rejected this argument by stating that lack of funds can’t be a ground for discrimination. The court even cited an example of B. R. Ambedkar; how a boy who struggled to get admission in an educational institution changed the history of education.
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