The Madras High Court directed the Centralised Admission Committee (CENTAC) of Puducherry UT administration to permit a woman doctor to attend NEET PG medical course counseling. The Puducherry woman doctor approached the HC challenging the decision of Oulgaret taluk tahsildar in the Union Territory rejecting her application for the nativity and OBC certificates for the counseling process.

Justice R Suresh Kumar passed the interim direction after hearing the counsel of the petitioner saying that the tahsildar rejected his client’s application for the reason that she married a Tamil Nadu man. Therefore, she sought a direction to quash the order of Oulgaret tahsildar and provide the OBC certificate and nativity certificate. According to the petitioner, if marriage is a deciding factor it would lead to discrimination between the persons of the same nativity and such a treatment on the basis of marriage either would discourage or suppress the concept of marriage or encourage the marriage concept to overcome the hurdle of NEET.

“Further a person unmarried cannot be treated differently from the person married to avail of a statutory or Constitutional benefit and hence the Original nativity of a person seeking the benefit with reference to his/her birth alone is important and not the marriage or any other factor which may happen or may not happen,” the petitioner submitted.

Recording the submissions, the judge directed the CENTAC to admit the petitioner for counseling as well as to keep a PG medical seat vacant. The judge also insisted the CENTAC to file a response and directed the admission committee not to allot any seat to the woman doctor till the disposal of the case.