'Objective of sports quota not to accommodate merit,' SC finds 75% marks for sportspersons 'unwarranted'

The Supreme Court has said that the objective of sports quota is promotion of sports in the institution, the university, and ultimately, in the country, and not to accommodate academic merit.

The top court declared the eligibility criterion of securing not less than 75 per cent marks in the qualifying examination in an engineering course as "unwarranted and discriminatory".

"The imposition of the minimum 75 per cent eligibility condition does not subserve the object of introducing the sports quota, but is, rather destructive of it; the criterion, in that sense subverted the object and is discriminatory; it therefore, falls afoul of the equality clause, in Article 14 of the Constitution," a bench of Justices S Ravindra Bhat and Aravind Kumar said.

The court allowed an appeal filed by Dev Gupta and others against the Punjab and Haryana High Court's order, which dismissed their plea against imposition of a minimum 75 per cent aggregate marks as an eligibility condition (in the qualifying examination) for admission in engineering courses under the 2 per cent sports quota at PEC University of Technology at Chandigarh.

The bench said universities are the nurseries or the catchment for sportspersons, who can represent in state, national, international level and Olympic sports. 

The bench emphasised that the state or educational institution can insist upon a minimum eligibility condition but that is not to say that such a condition would necessarily and mandatorily have to be what is applicable to general (or open category) candidates. 

The court said requiring all candidates to possess or fulfil a certain eligibility standard- such as the one, prescribed in the sports policy, of 2023 or the qualifying marks prescribed by the concerned Board, or university, to pass in the concerned subjects is entirely different from the prescription of a uniform standard, far higher than the such a minimum threshold. 

"It is quite possible that a sportsperson, who has and continues to represent the country in international Olympic sports and gained such excellence as to have bagged a medal or two, in say, wrestling, would be altogether excluded in the eventuality of a wrestler, of the same category (but who has never reached the national level) securing 80 per cent marks in the qualifying examination. It exactly this consequence which this court had warned would be the “unequal application” of uniform criteria, a wooden equality without regard to the inherent differences, which Article 14 frowns upon, and forbids," the bench said.