New Delhi, May 2
The Supreme Court seized of a bunch of petitions against the OBC quota in central education institutions (CEIs) today accepted for consideration a petition challenging the entire reservation policy for its alleged failure to provide benefits to the bottom layers among backwards and seeking its replacement with a comprehensive rational package.
The petition filed by a social organisation, Citizens for Equality (CFE), was mentioned before a Bench headed by Justice B.N. Agrawal, which posted it for hearing along with other petitions against the OBC Reservation Act for May 8.
Chief Justice of India K.G. Balakrishnan had advanced the hearing to May 8 from August on the Centre’s request after the court had rejected its application for vacating the interim stay on implementing the 27 per cent reservation for OBCs.
The case will be heard by the same Bench of Justices Arijit Pasayat and Lokeshwar Singh Panta, which had refused to vacate the stay on implementing the OBC reservation in CEIs.
The CFE, while making the Centre, all states and union territories as respondents, not only challenged the validity of the controversial Central Education Institutional Institutions (Reservation in Admission) Act, 2006, providing for OBC quota in the CEIs, but also challenged all constitutional amendments pertaining to the reservation policy. These include the 93rd amendment inserting Article 15(5), giving power to the Centre and states to enact laws to extend reservation in educational institutions, 86th amendment inserting
Article 21A and Article 51-A (k) and substituting Article 45.
But the first and foremost course chalked out by the government now is to make a case for referring the matter to a constitution Bench to decide the question whether the provision of Article 16(4) providing reservation for OBCs in public employment will have the same implication or not vis-a-vis Article 15(5) inserted by the 93rd amendment.
