Karnataka High Court says that authorities can re-look at sports quota eligibility list for CET-2024

The High Court of Karnataka on Tuesday said it is for the authorities to re-look at the list of candidates eligible under the sports quota for admission to professional courses, including medical and engineering, in view of its direction of permitting a girl, who was found ineligible under the sports quota due to a peculiar circumstance created because of COVID-19 pandemic, to participate in the counselling process.

The High Court of Karnataka on Tuesday said it is for the authorities to re-look at the list of candidates eligible under the sports quota for admission to professional courses, including medical and engineering, in view of its direction of permitting a girl, who was found ineligible under the sports quota due to a peculiar circumstance created because of COVID-19 pandemic, to participate in the counselling process.

A Division Bench comprising Chief Justice N.V. Anjaria and Justice K.V. Aravind passed the order while directing the Karnataka Examinations Authority (KEA) to include the 18-year-old petitioner, H.S. Deeksha Prasad of Mysuru, a tennis player, in the list of candidates eligible under the sports quota and allow her to participate in the counselling process for seat selection based on her CET ranking.

The court noted that the petitioner was found ineligible based on the norm that students claiming seats under the sports quota should have represented the State or the country and won a medal or participated in sports competitions in the last three financial years, including the financial year in which the candidate has applied for the CET under the quota.

Though the petitioner was eligible as per this norm, she was termed ineligible as the norm further stated that only one best or the highest achievement would be considered for a financial year. This situation, the Bench said, had arisen due to the non-conduct of national-level sports event such as the National School Games (NSG) during 2021 and 2022 due to COVID-19, and two NSG, for 2022-23 and 2023-24, were held within a financial year.

However, the Bench pointed out that the Office of the Director of School Education addressed a letter to the Commissioner for Sports and Youth Empowerment explaining the peculiar circumstance during COVID-19 that resulted in the conduct of two NSG within a financial year and to treat the NSG for two separate financial years else students under the sports quota would suffer. Also, the Bench noted that the list of eligible candidates were prepared much before this communication between the two authorities.

In view of the reasons cited in the communication, the Bench said that the petitioner was prima facie eligible for admission under the sports quota and directed the KEA to consider for allotment of seat.

Meanwhile, KEA advocate N.K Ramesh and the government counsel Sudev Hegde pointed out that there are a large number of students who were deprived of eligibility for admission under the sports quota on this peculiar scenario created because of COVID-19 and sought a direction from the court to extend the benefit of order passed in favour of the petitioner to other eligible students so that the authorities could revise the sports quota list and other candidates need not approach the court for a similar direction.