BY Anurag Mishra-
Three Judge Bench of Justice L Nageswara Rao, Hemant Gupta and S Ravindra Bhat started Day to day hearing on petitions challenging the validity of 12% quota for the Maratha Community in jobs and admissions to the educational institutions in the state.
But today the State of Maharashtra briefed the Supreme Court of India that they have decided not to conduct any recruitment till September 15 as the COVID19 numbers have significantly spiked in the state.
Background:
A year ago Maharashtra Government had announced that this Maratha Reservation will be applicable retrospectively. But, In July 2019, a Bench headed by the then CJI Ranjan Gogoi, while issuing notice in the plea, held that State of Maharashtra cannot apply the Maratha reservation retrospectively. Thus, the Maharashtra government’s orders applying the reservation retrospectively from 2014 will be subject to the outcome of the case in the Supreme Court.
Also in the previous hearings, Senior Advocate Kapil Sibal raised an issue before the apex court that if the 12% Maratha quota violated the 50% ceiling on reservation, then the Court should also simultaneously consider the validity of 10% quota for Economically Weaker Sections (EWS), as that would also breach the ceiling.
The point of law which requires the attention of the court was that with the introduction of Martha Quota, the total reservations in the state will shot up to 74%, which is 24% higher than the upper limit of total permissible quota set up by the Apex Court in Indra Sawhney Judgment.
The bench also assessed a request before it on July 16 by various advocates representing their parties to the case to adjourn the matter till physical hearing commences. But Justice Rao was of the opinion that there is no certainty on when normal courts would start functioning therefore an important issue such as this should be heard via video conferencing.
The Court will also take up for hearing the application raising preliminary issues on August 25. However, the final hearing in the case now stands adjourned to September 1 after the state government submitted that it would not conduct any recruitment till September 15.