The High Court of Karnataka has upheld the legality of the March 4, 2021 notification issued by the Central Government under the Citizenship Act restricting admission of Overseas Citizenship of India (OCI) students to professional courses only under the non-resident of India (NRI) quota.

However, the court allowed the petitioner-OCI students to stake claim for admission to engineering and other professional courses in Karnataka only for the academic year 2021-22 even under the general merit category of seats under government quota in the light of an interim order passed by the apex court, which had recently allowed OCI students to seek admission to medical and dental courses even under general merit category only for the academic year 2021-22.

Justice Krishna S. Dixit delivered the verdict while rejecting the challenge by Alekhya Ponnekanti and 123 OCI student-petitioners to the March 4, 2021 notification.

The court said all the petitioners could stake claim for admission for the year 2021-22 consistent with the interim order passed earlier in the petitions allowing them to participate in the selection process initiated by the Karnataka Examinations Authority (KEA), subject to their individual eligibility and qualification.

The petitioners had claimed that though they have foreign citizenship by virtue of their birth in foreign countries when their parents were working outside India for a temporary period, they should be treated on par with Indian citizens for admission to professional courses as they have domicile in India and studied minimum of seven years in Karnataka to stake claim for admission under government quota seats.

Refusing to accept their argument, the court agreed with the Central Government’s contention that the condition imposed on OCI students that they would be eligible for admission only through NRI quota was ‘consciously incorporated with intent to protect the interest of the domiciling natives [Indian citizen] who lack the competitive edge qua the OCI cardholders and the NRIs’.

“Both these classes, that is the OCI and the NRI who are now equated to each other, obviously have greater exposure to the outer world, by virtue of birth and upbringing in the case of former, and by virtue of residence in the case of the latter. The classification between the natives on the one hand and the OCIs and the NRIs on the other cannot be faltered by invoking equality clause…”, the court observed.

While upholding power of the Centre to issue such a notification under the Citizenship Act, the court also said: “It hardly needs to be stated that the foreigners and the native citizens apparently belong to two different classes, and therefore, treating them alike would fall foul of the principle of equality.”

The court did not find merit in petitioners’ contention that the March 4, 2021 notification was contrary to judgments of the High Court on the right of OCI students to seek admission under general merit seats under government quota based on the 2005 and 2009 notifications issued under the Citizenship Act.

The 2021 notification, the court said, has only restructured the educational rights of OCI cardholders by superseding the notifications of 2005 and 2009, and it is not a case of the executive reversing the judicial verdicts as earlier judgments did not interdict the issuance of present notification or the like.