September 10, 1999

India's High Court Rejects Caste Quotas in Admissions to Elite Graduate Programs

By MARION LLOYD

Striking a blow to efforts to expand India's affirmative-action system, the country's Supreme Court has ruled that academic merit, and not social caste, should be the primary criterion for admitting students to some graduate programs in medicine and engineering.

The landmark judgment follows years of acrimonious and sometimes-violent debate over whether quotas for members of the lower social castes and so-called backward classes should apply to India's elite technological

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