Chennai, July 5(BPNS)
The first bench of the Madras High Court represented by Chief Justice Sanjib Banerjee and Justice Senthilkumar Ramamoorthy has directed all petitioners in the National Eligibility- cum- Entrance Test (NEET) that the court would hear their petition dedicatedly on July 13 afternoon session.
Additional Solicitor General, R Sankaranarayanan informed the court that the Centre would file its counter affidavit by the end of the day or on Tuesday morning to a case filed by the BJP Tamil Nadu state secretary, K Nagarajan who had challenged the constitution of a committee headed by Justice(Rtd) A.K. Rajan to study on the impact of NEET in the state. The state government had constituted the committee in June 2021.
Advocate Sankaranarayanan said that he would also serve the copies of the counter affidavit to the writ petitioner as well as numerous political parties , organisations and individuals who wanted to be impleaded in the case.
The court had ordered that the Centre’s counter-affidavit should be filed by July 8 and served on the council of DK, DMK, MDMK, CPI, and others who wanted to implead in the case.
Advocate General R Shanmugasundaram representing the government of Tamil Nadu said that he was ready to argue the case and that he had already filed a counter-affidavit on behalf of the state government.
Senior lawyer, P Wilson who was representing a student who had impleaded in the case during the argument said, “ There is nothing new in the constitution of a committee and Justice P. Kalaiyarasan committee’s recommendation had led to 7.5% reservation for medical admission to government school students.”
Advocate V .Raghavachari appearing for the petitioner, K. Natarajan countered the argument of P . Wilson and said,” There is nothing new and all petitions regarding NEET were dismissed by the Supreme Court of India and there is resistance to NEET only in Tamil Nadu and this has to end. It’s a political game and it must end.”
Both the lawyers sparred against each other and Chief Justice Sanjib Banerjee intervened and said that both would be given ample time to argue their respective view points.
