NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court on Friday lifted the stay imposed by the Uttarakhand High Court on a 2006 order giving 30 percent reservation to women having domicile of the state in state civil services.
A bench of Justices S A Nazeer and V Ramasubramanian issued notice in the matter and sought reply on the Uttarakhand government's plea.
The Uttarakhand government had moved the top court against the high court's August 24, 2022 order.
It had passed the direction while hearing a petition filed by more than a dozen women candidates from outside the state who were under the unreserved category.
The petition said they were not allowed to appear for the state services main examination despite securing more marks than the cut-off set for domicile women of the state in the preliminary test held on April 3 this year.
The plea submitted that the Uttarakhand government did not have the power to provide domicile-based reservation and that the Constitution only allowed reservation on the basis of domicile only by a law enacted by Parliament.
In a statement issued in Dehradun, Uttarakhand Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami said, "We welcome the decision of the Hon'ble Supreme Court in the interest of the women of the state."
Describing the state government as committed to protect the interests of the women of the state, Dhami said, "We had also made full preparations to bring an ordinance to keep women's reservation in place and with this we have also appealed to the Supreme Court to take effective action." After the stay of the high court, the state government had filed a special leave petition in the Supreme Court to keep the women's reservation in place.