Supreme Court: The 3-judge bench of CJI Ranjan Gogoi and Deepak Gupta and Sanjiv Khanna, JJ refused to pass any order on whether the issue of 10 per cent reservation for economically weaker sections across all classes will be referred to a Constitution bench. It said it will hear the matter on March 28.
The Court has asked senior advocate Rajeev Dhavan, appearing for the petitioner, to file a short note of the points which they have raised in their application.
The Court had, on January 25, issued notice to the Central Government on the issue returnable within 4 weeks. It, however, did not stay the operation of the Centre’s decision granting quota to the poor in the general category
Various petitions have been filed by parties including organisations like Janhit Abhiyan and Youth For Equality, challenging the validity of the Constitution (103 Amendment) Act, 2019, which paved the way for grant of quota to poor belonging to general category.
The petition, filed by Youth For Equality, has sought the quashing of the Act saying that the economic criterion cannot be the sole basis for reservation. It says that the said law violates basic feature of the Constitution as reservation on economic grounds cannot be limited to the general categories and the 50 per cent ceiling limit cannot be breached.
The quota as per the new law will be over and above the existing 50 per cent reservation to SCs, STs and Other Backward Classes (OBCs). The Constitution (103 Amendment) Act, 2019 was passed by the Rajya Sabha on 09-01-2019 as The Constitution (One Hundred and Twenty- fourth Amendment) Bill, 2019, and was assented to by the President on 12-01-2019.
(Source: PTI)