JUDGMENT

KRISHNA IYER, J.:— The Universities in the country are often among the contributories to the flood of litigation in the higher courts of the country. This pathological condition, to which the present bunch of appeals bears testimony, must claim the healing attention of the nations educational leadership. The four appeals before us present challenges to the scheme of admission to post-graduate courses in medicine in the college of the Kerala State. But since that State is not alone in the tendency to temporise with constitutional values and writ petitions for college admissions are almost a hardy annual, we deem it our duty to permit ourselves a few preliminary observations before proceedings to the fact-situation and conflict-resolution.

2. Principled policy, consistent with constitutional imperatives (Articles 14 and 15) must guide admissions to courses in higher professional education but Governments and Universities, not infrequently take liberties with this larger obligation under provincial pressures and institutional compulsions and seek asylum in reluctant pragmatism mindless of hostility to constitutionality. Nothing is more harrowing for the Court, over-burdened wi