SC reserves order on OBC quota

QUESTION OF QUOTA: The Bench has ordered that various questions put forward by contesting parties be compiled.

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New Delhi: The Supreme Court has reserved its order on the Centre's plea to refer to a Constitution bench the issue of 27 per cent quota for OBCs in institutions of higher education, like IIMs and IITs.

A Bench comprising Justices Arijit Pasayat and L S Panta asked Solicitor General G E Vahanvati and senior advocate Harish Salve to compile the various questions put forward by contesting parties.

This was asked to be done as there was overlapping of points in the questions. The questions would then be considered by the larger Bench.

On Tuesday, the Supreme Court had asked various parties related to the matter to formulate the contentious points of law and put them before the court by Wednesday.

The matter had been listed for hearing before a the Bench, which is incidentally, the same Bench that declined to lift the stay on the implementation of the quota on March 29.

The Bench in an interim order had stayed the implementation of the law from the 2007-2008 academic sessions and had dismissed the Centre's application seeking the modification.

Thereafter, the Central Government had requested the intervention of Chief Justice K G Balakrishnan and sought an early hearing in the case.

Balakrishnan accepted the Centre's request for early hearing, despite protests from the anti-quota lobby saying it was the CJ’s “prerogative and privilege to decide which matter was to be heard on priority”.

Meanwhile, after Railway Minister Lalu Prasad's RJD and UPA’s ally PMK came in support of the 27 per cent quota and filed an application seeking to plead in the case in support of the central government.

Agencies report that justifying the 1931 census as the basis for arriving at the 27 percent quota for OBCs, Tamil Nadu said "collection of caste-wise details was dispensed with after 1931 census.

The only source in which the details are available is the 1931 census and therefore there is no harm in adopting the population and other details available in the above census.

(With inputs from PTI)