INDIA BUSINESS WORLD - APRIL 16^st - MAY 10^th - 2008

OBC QUOTA: SUPREME COURT CLEARS WAY FOR ADMISSIONS TO PG COURSES

THE Supreme Court has allowed admission of OBC students to post-graduate courses, putting on hold the Calcutta High Court order restraining IIM-Calcutta from rolling out the new reservation regime. The apex court said that institutes can admit OBC students to post-graduate course under the new quota regime subject to its final order. The court also stayed all pending cases in various high courts challenging the government’s notification of April 29, which provided quota for OBC students in post-graduate courses. Meanwhile, the HRD ministry has written to the law ministry to instruct standing counsels to file caveats in respective high courts so that the Centre is heard before any further petition is admitted by the courts.

A bench comprising chief justice KG Balakrishnan, justice HK Sema and justice PP Naolekar said it cannot “allow Calcutta High Court order to operate” when solicitor general GE Vahanvati mentioned Centre’s petition seeking vacation of the High Court order.

“Can the Calcutta High Court sit over the order of the Supreme Court”? asked the apex court when anti-quota petitioners said that there was confusion on the issue of extending reservation in post-graduate courses. Appearing for anti-quota petitioners, senior counsel Harish Salve said that the graduation yardstick should be equated with the creamy layer. “Once a candidate is graduate, he is out from the purview of the concept of socially and educationally backward.” The court responded: “Raise the plea and we will consider it”.

At the offset, the court said the five judge Constitution bench had upheld the legality of Central Educational Institutions (reservation in admission) Act, 2006 providing 27% reservation to OBCs. Following up, Vahanvati said that according to the proviso of the Act, quota was applicable in post-graduate courses as well. Appearing for anti-quota petitioners, senior counsel KK Venugopal argued that three judges of the said bench had favoured excluding graduates from the ambit of reservation. In what would seem like a clarification, the court said that while justice Dalveer Bhandari’s judgment did make this point, the common judgment of justices Arijit Pasayat and CK Thakker spoke about exclusion of graduates from the list of communities for the benefit of reservation.

“It was for the identification of the backward communities and not exclusion of graduates from reservation... Their judgment talked about the community and group and not individual for the purpose of exclusion. The community has to be excluded and not individual,” the chief justice said.