‘Will apply only prospectively’: SC on order to treat OCIs as NRIs in tests for medical courses

New Delhi : The Supreme Court on Friday declared that Centre’s March 2021 decision, stating Overseas Citizens of India (OCI) appearing for entrance tests to medical courses could not compete for seats reserved for Indian citizens would be applied with prospective effect only.
A bench of Justices A.S. Bopanna and C.T. Ravikumar said: “The notification suffers from the vice of non-application of mind and despite being prospective, is in fact ‘retroactive’ taking away the rights which were conferred also as a matter of policy of the sovereign state.” It further added, “the notification being sustainable prospectively, we hereby declare that the impugned portion of the notification which provides for supersession of the notifications dated 11.04.2005, 05.01.2007, and 05.01.2009 and the clause 4(ii), its proviso and Explanation (1) thereto shall operate prospectively in respect of OCI cardholders who have secured the same subsequent to 04.03.2021”.
The Central government had argued that OCI cardholders were not eligible for admission against any seat reserved exclusively for Indian citizens.
Also Read SC seeks Centre, 6 states reply on transfer of religious conversion cases from HC Citing that notification is based on a policy, the bench said in the exercise of the statutory power of a sovereign state, it would apply prospectively only to persons who are born in a foreign country subsequent to March 4, 2021. “… the date of the notification and who seek for a registration as OCI cardholder from that date since at that juncture the parents would have a choice to either seek for citizenship by descent or to continue as a foreigner in the background of the subsisting policy of the sovereign state,” it added, in a 75-page judgment.
The government had stressed that the OCI cardholder is a foreign national holding a passport from a foreign country and is not a citizen of India.