Surya Kant, J. - (1.) The core issue involved in this writ petition pertains to the methodology prescribed for admission to the Diploma in Education Course under the State Council of Education Research and Training, Haryana (SCERT).
(2.) The petitioners are mostly residents of Morni Hills area of District Panchkula and they have three fold grievances. Firstly, they challenge the allocation/distribution of streamwise seats i.e. 35% for Science, 28% for Commerce, 35% for Arts and 2% for Vocational, as according to the petitioners, admissions to the D.Ed. Course should be on the basis of combined/composite merit list. Their second grievance is that the allocation of only 2% seats only for Vocational Course is too less and meager to meet the aspirations of a majority of young students from back areas like Morni Hills as most of them want to join Vocational courses to earn their livelihood. The third grievance of the petitioners is that instead of admitting the candidates as per their stream-wise academic merit in 10+2 examination, there ought to be an Entrance Test for all the seats.
(3.) To substantiate the first plea, it is urged that stream-wise distribution of seats leads to hostile discrimination as the candidates with higher merit in 10+2 examination are deprived of admissions in the other streams where a candidate lower in merit gets admission for the incidental factor that he has passed his 10+2 examination in that particular stream. Challenge to the stream wise distribution of seats is sought to be supported with a decision of Madras High Court in the case Self Financing Private Teacher Training Institutes Association (Regd.) v. The State of Tamil Nadu and others, AIR 2008 (NOC) 1310.;