HC lets dental student continue with course after caste verification

NT Correspondent

Bengaluru: The High Court of Karnataka has quashed directions from the Dental Council of India and VS Dental College and Hospital discharging a student from the first year of BDS Course. The student had made a mistake in the application while mentioning the category of caste. This led to her losing the seat due to higher cut-off marks in the category she had mentioned.

The HC directed her to submit the true copy of her caste certificate and directed the Karnataka Examination Authority to verify it. The petition filed by the 19-year-old student Hithaishi S, came up for hearing before the division bench of Justice SR Krishna Kumar and Justice Venkatesh Naik T.

She had appeared for the NEET exam conducted in 2022 and secured a ranking of 9,17,014. She got admitted to the BDS course in VS Dental College. The Dental Council of India sent a communication to the college on January 6, 2023 that the 111 marks obtained by Hithaishi was less than the minimum cutoff marks of 117 prescribed under General Merit category and therefore she should be discharged from pursuing further studies.

The college issued the communication discharging her from the college on January 12, 2023. She approached the HC challenging this. Producing her caste certificate in the HC, her advocate argued that at the time of submitting the application to the National Testing Agency, due to oversight and inadvertence, she had described herself as belonging to General Merit Category instead of Category III(A) to which she actually belongs to.

Subsequently, her application to the KEA had mentioned her caste category correctly and even the caste certificate had been submitted. The HC in its judgment recently said, “We are of the considered opinion that, respondent Nos.1 and 2 committed an error in coming to the conclusion that the petitioner was liable to be discharged on the ground that she did not secure the minimum cut-off marks of 117 without appreciating that the said cut-off marks was applicable to the candidates belonging to General Merit Category and not to the petitioner, who undisputedly belonged to Category III(A) and consequently, the impugned communication deserves to be quashed.” The Court also directed that the caste certificate be verified by a competent authority.

“A perusal of the Karnataka State e-Information Bulletin published by the State Government in respect of admissions to Medical, Dental and Ayush Courses for the year 2022 also indicates that the Caste Certificate produced before this Court needs to be verified by the competent authority. In view of the above, we deem it just and proper to issue appropriate directions to the petitioner to re-submit Caste Certificate to Karnataka Education Authority for verification in accordance with law.”