The Supreme Court Thursday upheld 27 percent reservations for other backward classes (OBC) students in higher educational institutions like the Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs) and Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs).
The validity of the law was upheld by a five-judge constitutional bench headed by Chief Justice K.G. Balakrishnan, which said that candidates falling in the 'creamy layer' would not be eligible for quotas.
The Bench had on August 8 turned down the Centre's request for allowing admissions to OBCs under the 27% quota for the 2007-08 academic year itself during the pendency of the petitions.
The four-month-long arguments saw spirited arguments from solicitor general G E Vahanvati, former Attorney General K Parasaran and additional solicitor general Gopal Subramaniam. They presented the Centre's argument before the court impressing upon the need for quota for OBCs in CEIs without excluding the creamy layer.
Equally strong were the arguments from the anti-quota petitioners presented by senior advocates Fali S Nariman, Harish Salve, Rajeev Dhawan, K K Venugopal and P P Rao questioning the basis of the law. The Centre's main plank was that OBCs, who have been oppressed for centuries, needed a helping hand by means of quota and that caste was an accepted form of determination of backwardness as it was the basis for oppression and resultant backwardness.
Two aspects received a fair bit of attention from the apex court. First, the mode of determination of backwardness — whether it should be caste-based or economic condition, and secondly, whether the creamy layer should be excluded or not.
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