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No provision to remove disparities in quota law: counsel

Legal Correspondent

“It allows only more advanced among them to avail themselves of benefit of reservations leaving the hindmost uncared for”

Noon meal schemes help reduce drop outs from schools: Bench
“Inaccessibility to educational institutions results in backwardness”

New Delhi: “In the present ‘OBC quota law’ there is no provision for removing educational disparities among the backward classes. It depresses the bottom layers and pushes the upper layers among them,” argued senior counsel P.P. Rao before the Constitution Bench of the Supreme Court on Thursday.

Appearing for the petitioner Citizens for Equality, Mr. Rao submitted before a Bench headed by Chief Justice K.G. Balakrishnan that the present reservation policy “suffers from serious infirmities, constitutional and legal, and needs to be replaced by a rational policy of affirmative action for uplifting the weaker sections.”

The Bench that included Justice Arijit Pasayat, Justice C.K. Thakker, Justice R.V. Raveendran and Justice Dalveer Bhandari is hearing a batch of petitions questioning the 93rd Constitutional amendment and the OBC quota law enacted under this amendment.

Mr. Rao said:

“In the present policy, there is no attempt to remove the educational disparities among the Backward Classes, including the SCs and the STs inter se. It allows only the more advanced and educated sections among them to avail t hemselves of the benefit of reservations leaving the hindmost uncared for.

“The reservation policy being adopted by the Central Government and various State Governments is arbitrary since it is based on political considerations without collecting and considering relevant data. Continuation of the reservation policy even after 56 years of commencement of the Constitution and further enlarging the policy of reservation to new areas and institutions is arbitrary in as much as it overlooks the need for affirmative action to uplift the weaker sections.”

Referring to the 93rd amendment, he said “to the extent it permits reservation in admission to private unaided educational institutions, notwithstanding the basic feature of secularism, the principles underlying Articles 14, 15, 19 (1) (g) and 21 it abridges the basic structure of the Constitution.” He submitted that “it is also violative of the principles of equality underlying Articles 14 and 15 which are part of the basic structure to the extent it excludes minority educational institutions from its purview without there being any reasonable basis much less any rational nexus with the object sought be achieved.”

Finding fault with the successive governments for not providing compulsory primary and secondary education up to X level, Mr. Rao said “the framers of the Constitution were of the view that it was necessary to provide about 10 years of free and compulsory education to every child so that no one is educationally backward in the country.” He said extremism was spreading in several States because of the failure of the States to provide primary education to children and because people continued to remain backward.

The Bench reminded counsel that thousands of crores of rupees were being spent by various States for providing primary and secondary education and the noon-meal schemes helped in reducing school dropouts.

Justice Raveendran asked Mr. Rao, “can we say to the government don’t implement reservation till it completes the exercise of providing 100 per cent compulsory primary and secondary education. You can say that compulsory education and quota can be simultaneously implemented but you can’t say that reservation can never be implemented at all. Why do you want to prevent something good being done.”

Mr. Rao said, “poverty causes social backwardness. Inaccessibility of educational institutions also results in educational backwardness. For the purposes of Article 15 (4) and 15 (5), the classes should be both social and educationally backward. Either social backwardness or educational backwardness alone will not do.”

He will continue his arguments on September 11.

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