Supreme Court Agrees To Hear Challenge To Centre's Circular Treating OCIs As NRIs For Admissions

The Supreme Court on Monday (September 30) agreed to consider the plea by an Overseas Citizen of India (OCI) who has challenged government circular treating OCIs to be NRIs for the purposes of admissions in medical and engineering courses. 

The bench led by CJI DY Chandrachud and Justices JB Pardiwala and Manoj Misra was hearing a challenge to the Punjab and Haryana High Court's order which dismissed challenge to the impugned circular barring OCIs to be treated under General Category for medical and engineering admissions. 

Sr Advocate Mukul Rohatgi appearing for the petitioner explained that the petitioner being an OCI qualified to apply under the 85% general category quota of the State. However, a circular was subsequently issued by the Ministry of Home Affairs on March 4, 2021 barring OCI to be treated under General Category. As per the circular, OCI students can only apply to NRI seats or supernumerary seats for all India entrance tests like NEET, JEE(Mains) and JEE (Advanced) and barred them from applying to seats exclusively reserved for Indian citizens.

The Senior counsel added that fees for NRI quota is 1 lakh 10 thousand dollars, with token fees as 9 Lakhs. Rohatgi added that since the petitioner's father is gallantry awardee, he is qualified for 1% quota within the general category.

"My father is a gallantry medal recipient; he is entitled to one percent quota in the State of Punjab - so within the general category I have 1 % quota."  

Rohatgi described the situation as a "comedy of errors." He mentioned approaching the High Court, which declined to intervene, fearing it would upset other applicants. 

The CJI acknowledged the petitioner's father's gallantry award and decided to issue a notice to examine the matter further. 

"We will issue notice...we will see, your father is a gallantry award winner." 

Notably, in February 2023 the bench of Justices AS Bopanna and CT Ravikumar held that the notification issued by the Central Government in 2021 - which took away the rights of Overseas Citizens of India (OCI) category students to apply for general seats and confined their right only to Non-Resident Indians (NRI) category seats- will apply only prospectively from the date of the notification, which is March 4, 2021.

The Court further held that that the "petitioners in all these cases and all other similarly placed OCI cardholders will be entitled to the rights and privileges which had been conferred on them earlier to the notification dated 04.03.2021 and could be availed by them notwithstanding the exclusion carved out in the notification dated 04.03.2021".

The judgment was pronounced in a batch of petitions filed by OCI students challenging the 2021 notification.

Case Details : ARANAV BHARGAV vs. THE BABA FARID UNIVERSITY OF HEALTH SCIENCES, FARIDKOT THROUGH ITS REGISTRAR| SLP(C) No. 022927 - 022928 / 2024 

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