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Counsel oppose Centre’s plea for vacating stay

New Delhi: A battery of senior lawyers, led by Harish Salve, opposed in the Supreme Court on Tuesday the Centre’s application for a direction to vacate the March 29 interim stay order, restraining the Government from implementing the 27 per cent quota for the Other Backward Classes from 2007-2008.

Mr. Salve, appearing for a petitioner, argued that no new grounds had been cited in the Centre’s application for vacating the stay. Other than the Tamil Nadu case, no new circumstance had been cited. “There is no mention as to how many seats have been increased in how many institutions and on what basis the cut-off will lie.”

“Till 2006-2007, there was no reservation for OBCs. Why should the Government rush through the quotas for this year when there is no statistics or data?” On the reference to the order passed in Tamil Nadu case, he said it was done as an interim arrangement because the law was included in the IX Schedule of the Constitution. Even this order would not help the Government as it was done specifically to benefit the general category students and not the OBC students.

On the contention that the increase in the seats would not affect general category students, he said, “The Government is saying that seats will be increased from 100 to 154, of which 77 seats, which earlier remained for general category (with 23 reserved for SC/ST out of the 100 seats), will continue to be available to the general category even after the seats are increased. By reserving the entire 54 seats for reservation, in fact they are reserving 100 per cent seats.” Utilising the taxpayers’ money to increase the seats and reserving them exclusively for the OBCs would be violative of Article 29 (2) of the Constitution.

Senior counsel K.K. Venugopal referred to the Centre’s affidavit, which said, “The Executive and the Legislature have taken all aspects of the matter into account and decided not to exclude socially advanced persons/creamy layer from the purview of reservation. This needs to be given weightage keeping in view all the factors.” This was nothing but contempt of court.

By not excluding the “creamy layer,” the really backward sections among the Backward Classes would not be benefited, and only the advanced sections would corner all the benefits. “There are economically poorer sections among the higher classes who would not get any benefit.”

Mr. Venugopal said, “There was tremendous heart-burning among several sections of the people that the creamy layer was cornering all the benefits.

The bane of this country is that when it comes to reservation all political parties join together.”

“When 256 million people in this country are poor, one should ponder whether caste by itself is the real basis for reservation. When there are fissiparous tendencies among certain sections of the people, we will be adding to that if the court were to vacate the stay,” he said.

Senior counsel P.P. Rao and Rajeev Dhavan joined Mr. Salve and Mr. Venugopal in opposing the plea for vacating the stay. Arguments on the main petitions will be taken up on Wednesday.

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