Hyderabad: The Telangana High Court has directed that children of central government employees who are posted outside the state be treated as local candidates for medical admissions, holding there was no justification for denying them an exemption already available to children of state government employees.
A bench of Chief Justice Aparesh Kumar Singh and Justice GM Mohiuddin passed the order while disposing of a petition filed by Kodimela Samhitha, a NEET-UG 2026 candidate who had challenged her exclusion from local candidate status for MBBS and BDS admissions for the 2026-27 academic year at Kaloji Narayana Rao University of Health Sciences.
Local candidate status typically requires a student to have studied in Telangana for four consecutive academic years and determines eligibility for a share of medical seats reserved for local students.
Samhitha had challenged a proviso to Rule 3(a)(iii) of the Telangana Medical and Dental Colleges Admission Rules, 2017, as amended by a government order dated September 8, 2025. The rule allows candidates who studied outside Telangana during the qualifying years to still be treated as local candidates, but only if they fall under one of four categories.
These are children of state government employees, children of Telangana-cadre All India Services officers, children of defence and paramilitary personnel and children of employees of state-owned corporations who are liable to be transferred.
Samhitha’s father, an employee of the Employees’ State Insurance Corporation (ESIC), a central government body, was transferred from Hyderabad to Tirupati in December 2016 and posted back to Hyderabad only in May 2024. During that period, she completed her schooling and intermediate education in Andhra Pradesh
.Since ESIC is a central government corporation rather than a state one, she did not fall within any of the four exempted categories under the rule, despite holding a nativity certificate confirming her father’s Telangana origin.
Her counsel argued that the classification had no rational connection to the purpose of the rule, since children of central government employees face the exact same hardship on account of their parents’ transfers as children of state government employees do. She pointed to an earlier interim order of the court in which a similar exclusion had been found prima facie arbitrary.
Advocate General A Sudershan Reddy, appearing for the Telangana government, conceded that the reasoning behind the exemption ought to extend to children of central government employees as well, and told the court that a clarificatory amendment to the rule was already under active consideration.
Recording this concession, the bench held that it was unnecessary, at this stage, to rule on whether the provision was constitutionally valid. Instead, it directed that the proviso be read, pending a formal amendment, to also cover children of central government employees, central government corporations and central Public Sector Undertakings (PSU), on the same terms as children of state government employees.
The university was directed to admit Samhitha into the ongoing counselling process as a local candidate and the state government was directed to expeditiously issue the formal amendment to the rule.
The court clarified that this relief would apply on a pro tanto basis, that is, to the extent needed for now, until the amendment is formally notified.
This post was last modified on August 19, 2026 2:28 pm