Court passes quota with some reservations

QUOTA UNQUOTE: The panel said if quota seats were vacant, they would be given to general category students.

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SC upheld a law which provides OBCs 27 pc quota in educational institutes.

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• The politics of quota: All parties welcome verdict
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Keywords: Verdict, Supreme Court

New Delhi: Eighteen years after the Mandal reservation riots, when the country went up in flames, the Other Backward Classes (OBCs) have won their ultimate battle — 27 per cent reservation in Government-run higher educational institutions.

They had already earned their 27 per cent reservation in Government jobs after the Indira Sawhney judgement of 1993. Now, Thursday's landmark judgement of the Supreme Court enables them for a relatively easy passage to institutions like IITs, IIMs and medical colleges like AIIMS.

The Supreme Court had begun deliberating this case two years ago. The reason for the delay in the judgement was one question to which the court was not getting a satisfactory answer to from the Government — How was the figure 27 per cent arrived at for the OBCs?

However, on Thursday, all the five judges on the panel were unanimous in their view.

Chief Justice K G Balakrishnan and his brother judges Arijit Pasayat, C K Thakkar, R V Ravindran and Dalveer Bhandari agreed with the broad reservation principles enshrined in the act.

• Green signal to 27 per cent reservations for the OBCs
• Excluding the Creamy layers
• The quotas will be for government-funded higher education institutions
• The Government can go ahead and implement OBC reservation from this year itself

Justice Pasayat had his own views on some other aspects. He said: "If seats are vacant they should be offered to general candidates. There should be a periodic review of the castes and the OBC Commission should work vigorously in identifying backward classes. Also, more stress should be given to primary and secondary education."

Meanwhile, Justice Bhandari said, "There should be financial incentives for poor families to send their wards to schools. Children of MPs and MLAs should be counted in creamy layer

In the end, it was a victory for the Government. The OBC legal mess had become part of the several areas of potential face-off between the legislature and the judiciary. The Government was insisting that it was a policy issue and the court could not go on putting roadblocks.