High Court: Scrutiny Required for Resident Certificates:
The Telangana High Court has instructed the state government to advise tahsildars to exercise caution when issuing permanent resident certificates to students who use them to claim local candidate quotas.
In a case heard by a division bench consisting of Chief Justice Alok Aradhe and Justice T. Vinod Kumar, concerns were raised about the necessity of granting resident certificates to students pursuing higher education in other states.
The court’s viewpoint is that certificates specifying a particular duration of the applicant’s stay cannot be classified as permanent home certificates.
This matter pertained to a group of students who filed petitions seeking directives for Kaloji Narayana Rao University for Health Sciences to acknowledge their resident certificates and grant them eligibility for local quotas. The university had denied them admission under the local candidate quota because their home certificates had a defined time frame.
Upon inquiry, A. Prabhakar Rao, counsel for the university, explained that resident certificates were issued to candidates who had relocated to Amarvati after the state’s bifurcation. These students had completed their education from Class Eight to Intermediate in Andhra Pradesh.
The court noted that it had recently issued orders to relax the local rule based on permanent residence certificates to ensure that no Telangana student would miss out on the local candidate quota. However, the court observed that the current situation was contradictory to its intent. Therefore, the court suggested that the tahsildar’s office should investigate the nativity and educational certificates of candidates before issuing such quota certificates. It directed Advocate-General B.S. Prasad to inform the government to issue guidelines to the relevant authorities responsible for issuing resident certificates.
Also read: Investigation: Government Confirms Ongoing Inquiry into NoC Scam
