New Delhi: The Supreme Court will take up for final hearing on Tuesday the petitions challenging the constitutional validity of the law providing for 27 per cent reservation for the Other Backward Classes (OBCs) in elite Central educational institutions.

A Bench comprising Justices Arijit Pasayat and Lokeshwar Singh Panta, which declined to vacate the stay on implementation of the law for 2007-08, will hear these petitions.

PMK application

On Monday, five Pattali Makkal Katchi MPs filed an application seeking to implead themselves in the case. M. Ramadoss, E. Ponnusamy, A.K. Moorthy, K. Dhanraj and R. Senthil said the legitimate share of the Backward Classes was appropriated by socially forward and powerful sections to perpetrate social injustice.

The subject matter was too precious to be left to be defended by the Centre, particularly in the light of the subversion to deny reservation for the last 56 years.

On the petitioners finding fault with the OBC figures, the PMK application said that as per the Mandal Commission report the OBC population was estimated at 52 per cent. Going by the national sample survey conducted in 1999-2000 by the National Sample Survey Organisation, the OBC population was 36 per cent and after deducting the Muslim population, it would come to around 28.3 per cent.

Hence the petitioners could not have any grievance over the 27 per cent quota for the OBCs.

Mandate

The MPs said it was high time the apex court removed the veil behind the myth of merit and enforced the mandate of the Constitution in the larger interests of the people depressed, oppressed and suppressed for centuries, inasmuch as the sovereign will of the people could not be tampered with by any authority.

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