NEW DELHI: The five-judge bench of the Supreme Court on Tuesday said that it would commence hearing the pleas that challenge the 10% reservation granted to the Economically Weaker Sections (EWS) for admission in central government and private educational institutions and recruitment in central government services from September 13.
A bench of CJI UU Lalit, Justices Dinesh Maheshwari, SR Bhat, Bela Trivedi & JB Pardiwala however refused to issue notice to the states but clarified that every state that wanted to argue can argue.
“Order that we’ve decided, we’ll stick to that. Every state that wants to argue is always welcome and every state is entitled to do that,” the CJI remarked.
Taking note of the draft issues framed by Senior Advocate Gopal Sankaranarayanan, court asked for circulating the same and asked parties to place “crystallised version” of all the issues on Thursday (September 8).
Considering that the counsels would require 18 hours in making their arguments the bench said, “What we propose to do is, the questions which get thrown up, we may give some time extra to either side, so effectively 5 working days. 3 working days in the first week and 2 in the second week. We will begin the matter next Tuesday.”
The court’s order came in 39 pleas, lead one filed by Janhit Abhiyan that challenged the 103rd Constitutional Amendment that provided a 10% quota for EWS.
The government had said the new law will not be covered by the Indra Sawhney versus Union of India (popularly called Mandal Commission verdict) verdict of 1992 as provision for the reservation was made after amending the Constitution.
"That the Constitution Amendment (103rd) Act 2019 was necessitated to benefit the economically weaker sections of the society who were not covered within the existing schemes of reservation, which as per statistics, constituted a considerably large segment of the Indian population," an affidavit filed by the Centre in 2019 had said.
In order to do justice across all weaker sections of the society, it had said, "it was therefore considered imperative that the Constitution be appropriately amended to enable the State to extend various benefits, including reservations in educational institutions and public employment to the EWSs of the society who are not covered by any of the existing schemes of reservation".
The Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha had cleared the bill on January 8 and 9 in 2019 respectively and it was then signed by then President Ram Nath Kovind.
The EWS quota is over and above the existing 50 per cent reservation to SCs, STs and Other Backward Classes (OBCs).
(With PTI Inputs)