The Allahabad High Court has quashed government orders of Uttar Pradesh that resulted in more than 79 per cent of seats being reserved in government medical colleges across four districts — Ambedkar Nagar, Kannauj, Jalaun, and Saharanpur.
Delivering the verdict on Thursday, Justice Pankaj Bhatia of the Lucknow bench directed the state to conduct a fresh round of admissions, strictly in line with the Uttar Pradesh Reservation Act, 2006, which upholds the 50 per cent ceiling on quotas.
The ruling came on a writ petition filed by NEET-2025 candidate Sabra Ahmed, who challenged the state’s allocation pattern. Ahmed, who secured 523 marks with an all-India rank of 29,061, argued that a series of government orders issued between 2010 and 2015 had illegally inflated the reservation percentage in these colleges.
According to the petition, out of 85 seats in the state government quota at each of the colleges, only seven were left for unreserved candidates, leaving the overwhelming majority earmarked for reserved categories. The plea highlighted this as a blatant violation of the settled principle that reservation must not exceed 50 per cent.
The Uttar Pradesh government and the Director General of Medical Education and Training opposed the plea, relying on the Supreme Court’s Indira Sawhney judgment to claim that the 50 per cent cap was not an unbreakable rule and could be exceeded under special circumstances.
The court, however, rejected this argument, noting that any attempt to breach the 50 per cent ceiling must follow proper legislative or constitutional procedures. It held that the government orders in question lacked such legal backing and therefore could not stand.
The bench directed that all admissions in the affected medical colleges be reallocated in compliance with the statutory reservation framework, ensuring that the total reservation does not surpass the 50 per cent threshold.
