New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Thursday ruled that a larger bench would decide on the constitutional validity of 27 per cent reservation for Other Backward Classes (OBCs) in government-funded higher education institutes.
A bench comprising Justices Arijit Pasayat and P K Jain said a larger bench would review the 93rd constitutional amendment, which implements the reservation.
The bench had earlier this year stayed the implementation of the provision relating to OBC reservation in elite institutions like IITs and IIMs in the Central Educational Institutions (Reservation by Admission) Act, 2006.
The Centre approached the court for an urgent hearing on the issue by a larger bench so that a decision could be given at the earliest to enable implementation of the reservation for the current academic year.
Pointing out that the Government's reservation policy appears to be violative of various provisions like Articles 14, 15, 21 and 22 which guarantee fundamental right, the bench wondered what was the yardstick being applied in perpetuating the policies.
The court felt that if the Government wanted to adopt a policy it should have focused on ensuring compulsory education for illiterates irrespective of the caste barrier.
The bench also raised a query as to why minority educational institutions have been exempted from implementing the 27 per cent quota policy, which had been made mandatory for all non-minority educational institutions.
Inclusion of private educational institutions for the purpose of implementing the policy was unrelated to compelling time, computable data and violative of the constitutional provisions.
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