The main legal point established in the judgment is that a policy decision providing reservation based on unrepresented districts must have a clear identification of educationally backward areas and establish a reasonable nexus between the policy and its objective to be constitutionally valid.

Claiming to be perplexed at the decision of the State Government and challenging the virus and constitutionality of the State Cabinets decision to select and nominate candidates for pursuing the courses of MBBS and BDS on the basis of a policy, which provides for making selection and nomination of those candidates, who do not come within the zone of consideration on the basis of the merit list prepared following the Joint Entrance Examination (hereinafter, in short, called as "the JEE"), but are from such districts (s) from which no candidate could be selected on the basis of merit alone for pursuing the said courses, the principle, thus, being that each district of the State must get representation if any of its candidate has received the requisite qualifying marks, though he may be far lower than others in the merit list, the petitioners have approached this Court.

2. By this application made under Article 226 of the Constitution of India, the petitioners, who find their names mentioned in the merit list prepared after the JEE, held for selecting candidates for, inter alia, MBBS and BDS Course, for the academic session 2002-2003, has approached this Court with prayer for, inter alia, issuing writ(s) setting aside and quashing the State Cabinet decision taken in the year 1992 and communicated to the Selection Committee concerned vide Governments policy letter, dated 23-6-95, (Annexure 3 to the writ petition) issued by the Commissioner (Personnel) of the Government of A.P., Itanagar.

3. After the affidavit-in-opposition was filed in this case by the State respondents, the writ petitioners filed an additional affidavit and, thus, the case of the petitioners, which has finally emerged from their pleadings, may, in a narrow compass, put as follows.

The petitioners are members of the local scheduled tribes and are permanent residents of the State of Arunachal Pradesh. The petitioners have passed Class XI examination with good marks from science stream and are eligible to be selected for admission to the post of MBBS and BDS in the colleges of any university. The Government of Arunachal Pradesh receives, every year, some seats from distribution amongst students of Arunachal Pradesh for medical courses, namely, MBBS and BDS from Government of India as well as from regional medical institutions colleges on the ground that there is no Institution, in the State of Arunachal Pradesh, to impart such education. The seats so received are required to be distributed amongst the students, who qualify in the JEE (held for this purpose) in order of their merit. For the purpose of making selection, students are categorized into four categories, namely, Category-I, which comprises of all Tribal Students of Arunachal Pradesh and includes the children of State Govt. servants as well as all India service officers, Category-II, which comprises of children of Non-Tribal employees of the Govt. of Arunachal Pradesh. Category-III, which comprises of children of Non-Tribal All India Service employees and includes the children of employees of PandT, BRTF. CRPF, Army etc. who have served, at least, two years in Arunachal Pradesh, Category-IV, which consists of children of Non-Tribals, who have been staying for number of years in Arunachal Pradesh and are engaged in business or are privately employed and that 80% of seats are reserved for Category I, 12% for Category-II, 04% for Category-III and 04% for Category-IV. This year also, a JEE was conducted and the result of the said examination has been published on 19-6-2002. The minimum qualifying marks in the JEE was 30% for APST and 45% for non-APST candidates. In the merit list so published, petitioner Nos. 1 to 7 appear at Serial Nos. 24, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30 and 31 respectively. This year, same as the last year, the seats allotted by the Central Government are 24 for MBBS and 2 for BDS courses and the seats offered by regional colleges/institutions are 10 for MBBS and 3 for BDS courses. As per the r