Violation of fundamental rights

The Chief Justice.-In these two applications substantially the same questions fall to be decided and they were therefore heard together. In C.M.P. No. 5255 of 1950 the petitioner is one Srimathi Champakam Dorairajan. In the affidavit filed by her in support of the application, she states that she is a graduate of the Madras University having passed in 1934 the B.A. degree examination taking Physics and Chemistry for her subjects, that owing to financial and other difficulties she could not join forthwith or seek to join the Medical College, that she has since been able to decide on reading for a medical degree, that she made enquiries with regard to her admission into the Government Medical College at Madras in the M.B., B.S. course, that she ascertained that in respect of admissions into the said College the authorities were enforcing and observing an order of the Government referred to as the Communal Government Order, in and by which the admission into the Medical College is to be regulated not by qualification or suitableness of the candidate applying for admission, but by directions involving the making of discriminations between applicant and applicant on the ground of caste, sex, etc., and that in the face of that order she had little or no chance of being admitted into the said College. She contends that the said Order of Government is void as it is inconsistent with the provisions of the Constitution of India and operates as an infringement of her personal right as a citizen of the State of Madras, and that the maintenance of that order is an infringement of the fundamental rights declared and formulated by the Constitution of India. She therefore prays for the issue of a writ of mandamus, or any other suitable prerogative writ restraining the State of Madras and all its officers and subordinates from enforcing, observing, maintaining or following or requiring the enforcement, observance, maintenance or following by the concerned authorities in the State of the Notification or Order generally referred to as the Communal Government Order in and by which admissions into the Madras Medical College is sought or permitted to be regulated in such a manner as to infringe and involve the violation of the fundamental rights referred to in the clauses of the Constitution of India, namely, Article 15, clause (1) and Article 29, clause (2).

In C.M.P. No. 5340 the petitioner is one C.R. Srinivasan. In his affidavit he states that he has passed the Intermediate Examination of the Madras University held in March, 1950, in Group I taking Mathematics, Physics and Chemistry as his optionals in the first class and obtained for a maximum of 450 marks in the optionals 369 marks; that he has filed an application for admission to the Engineering College at Guindy, that he learns that the admission in the Engineering College is governed by a Government Order whereby admission is governed by communal proportion (the order already referred to in the previous Civil Miscellaneous Petition), that he apprehends that there is no prospect of his application being considered on its merits with due regard to his qualifications, ignoring considerations of race, caste or religion. The petitioner contends that the said Government Order is inconsistent with Article 15 and Article 29(2) of the Constitution and prays that the Government may rescind the Order and direct the Committee appointed to select the candidates for admission into the Engineering College to consider his application for admission on its relative merits without reference to considerations of religion, race, caste, language or any of them and to dispose of the same in accordance with the terms of Articles 29 (2) and 15 of the Constitution.

On behalf of the State of Madras counter-affidavits were filed in the two petitions setting forth practically the same legal contentions. In the counter-affidavit filed in C.M.P. No. 5255 of 1950 it is stated that the total number of seats available in th

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