Supreme Court: Agreeing to examine the Centre’s decision to grant 10 % reservation in jobs and education to poor candidates belonging to general category, the bench of Ranjan Gogoi, CJ and Sanjiv Khanna, J issued notice to the Central Government returnable within 4 weeks. The Court, 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.
A similar plea has been filed by businessman Tehseen Poonawalla seeking to quash the law, saying that backwardness for the purpose of reservation cannot be defined by “economic status alone”.
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)