Goa High Court issues rulings on reservation matters

The High Court of Bombay at Goa has issued two significant rulings regarding reservation policies in the state.

In one matter, the court declined to grant an interim stay on the implementation of a new 100-point reservation roster for postgraduate medical admissions at Goa Medical College (GMC). The decision follows a petition by 41 NEET-PG qualified doctors from the general category who challenged the seat allocation framework. The petitioners argued that the combined reservation for Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes, Other Backward Classes, and Economically Weaker Sections was arbitrary and undermined merit-based opportunities. The court noted that reservation policy is generally a government prerogative and found no prima facie evidence that the decision-making process was arbitrary.

Separately, the High Court issued an interim stay on the issuance of a notification intended to estimate the Scheduled Tribe (ST) population in Goa. Vijai Sardesai, chief of the Goa Forward Party, criticized the stay, describing it as a setback to the long-standing demand for political reservation for the ST community. Sardesai argued that the legal development contradicts previous government assurances regarding political representation for the state’s original inhabitants.