- (1.) This appeal under Clause X of the Letters Patent Appeal is directed against the order of the learned Single Judge, dated 12th September, 1989 Annexure P-3, passed in Civil Writ Petition No. 9558 of 1989 whereby the writ petition of the appellants being CWP No. 10450 of 1989 and a few more writ petitions were dismissed.
(2.) The appellants had applied for admission to the LLB. Course in Punjab University, but they were denied the same. In their writ petition No. 10450 of 1989, the appellants challenged the action of the respondent-University denying admission to them, on various rules and regulations of the University Calendar and also on the ground that the reservation of 5% seats for the employees working in the University and their wards who had lower percentage of marks than the appellants, was illegal, discriminatory and unconstitutional. Having failed in the writ petition, they have preferred the instant appeal.
(3.) The question with regard to reservation of 5% of the employees of the University-respondent No. 1 and their wards had earlier came up for consideration before this Court in Parveen Hans v. The Registrar, Punjab University and others, 1990 97 PunLR 490, in which the learned Single Judge after taking into consideration the Full Bench decision rendered by the Patna High Court in Umesh Chandra Sinha v. V.N. Singh, 1968 AIR(Pat) 3 and the decision of Bombay High Court in Prasanna Dinkar Sohale etc. v. The Director-in-charge Laxminarayan Institute of Technology, Nagpur, 1982 AIR(Bom) 176 and noticing some other decision, observed as under : "Reservations, as has been held in the binding judicial precedents, referred to earlier bear no reasonable nexus with the object to be achieved and are plainly discriminatory and have thus to be held to be wholly unconstitutional." In Parveen Hans's case , there was no stipulation in the prospectus with regard to reservation of seats for the University employees and their wards for admission to the LL.B. Course, but at a subsequent stage, that is, on the day on which admissions were to be completed, when apparently to extend the concession to the Panjab University employees and their wards, 15 additional seats were created and reserved for them, in the Department of Laws and were, in fact, filled up from amongst that category. The learned Single Judge took a serious note of this action of the University and observed, thus : "It must be observed that it was in latent disregard of the known and settled law that the University created and reserved additional seats for its employees and their wards and this action must, therefore, invite adverse comment. It is clearly incumbent upon the University authorities to ensure that such disregard of law never recur. If such reservation is even again made, the University authorities would be well advised to bear in mind that it would run the risk of being construed as a deliberate violation of the prohibition reiterated here and those making it would lay themselves open to the penal consequences, that in unusual course flow from disobedience of the directions of this Court.";