The Hindu : National : Quota should stop some day, says Supreme Court

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Wednesday, Aug 15, 2007
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Quota should stop some day, says Supreme Court

J. Venkatesan

NEW DELHI: A five-judge Constitution Bench of the Supreme Court considering the validity of the law providing 27 per cent quota for the Other Backward Castes on Tuesday observed that reservation would have to be stopped some day.

The Bench comprising Chief Justice K. G. Balakrishnan, Justice Arijit Pasayat, Justice C. K. Thakker, Justice R. V. Raveendran and Justice Dalveer Bhandari told senior counsel Harish Salve, appearing for one of the petitioners, “It [reservation] will have to stop some day… after some years or decades. It must come to an end one day.” Mr. Salve had argued that reservation could not be a perpetual one as it should end one day.

The Bench said, “If it is perpetuated, the entire object will be defeated. Since it [law] is an enabling provision it has to be time-bound. Conceptually it [reservation] has to be terminated at some point of time.”

‘Periodical review’

To a question from the Bench whether reservation could be withdrawn after it had achieved its purpose, Mr. Salve said “reservation cannot be a perpetual one. There must be a periodical review of the policy to see whether the object is being achieved or not”.

Mr. Salve harped on the need for exclusion of “creamy layer” from the purview of reservation as otherwise vested interest would be created in the society. Further arguments will continue on Thursday.

The All-India Backward Classes, SC/ST Action Committee in a petition justified the quota law and said exclusion of “creamy layer” would be detrimental to the interests of the OBC/SC/ST population. It said that the apex court had stayed implementation of the OBC quota this year without giving any opportunity to any of the OBC organisations although the order directly affected OBC students.

The petitioner contended that the defenders of merit had never answered the persistent question as to why they had never raised a storm against the private colleges which admitted unqualified students on payment of hefty capitation fee, whether it was for admission to engineering, medical or any other professional course.

It sought a direction to implement the quota law and to dismiss all the petitions questioning its implementation.

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