Another major assault on the 10 per cent quota law for poor among forward sections is the fact that it breaches the 50 per cent ceiling on reservation fixed by the SC, YFE said.
The first challenge to the 10 per cent quota for poor in education and jobs among the unreserved population in the country was filed on Thursday in the Supreme Court by a medical doctor and an NGO that has remained in the forefront of opposing reservation in education.
Filing the petition against the 124th Constitution Amendment Bill 2019 even before it has come into operation, the petitioners — Kaushal Kany Mishra and NGO Youth for Equality — found several grounds in the proposed law cleared by both Houses of Parliament that violate the Constitution's basic structure.
Striking at the heart of the Bill, which introduces reservation for an entirely new segment of society called the 'economically weaker section', the petition said that economic criteria alone cannot be the basis for granting reservation.
This was laid down by the Supreme Court in the historic 1992 decision of Indira Sawhney vs Union of India. Also, such beneficiaries cannot include persons among the general category of citizens, the petition added.
"By way of the present amendments, the exclusion of OBCs and SCs/STs from the scope of economic reservation essentially implies that only those who are poor from general categories would avail the benefits of the quotas," argued the petition filed by advocate Gopal Sankaranarayanan.
"Taken together with the fact that the high creamy layer limit of Rs 8 lakh per annum ensures that the elite in the OBCs and SCs/STs capture the reservation benefits repeatedly, the poor sections of these categories remain completely deprived. This is an overwhelming violation of the basic feature of equality enshrined in Article 14 of the Constitution and elsewhere," the petition added.
The next major assault on the 10 per cent quota law for poor among the forward sections of population has come on the premise that it breaches the 50 per cent ceiling on reservation fixed by the Supreme Court.
Later in a press release issued by the NGO, the organisation said that by this law, the limit of total reservation will increase to 60 per cent. This could open a Pandora's box as more and more political parties/caste groups will claim for increased percentage of reservations, both at the Centre and state level, YFE said, demanding that the 27 per cent OBC reservation also ought to be tested on economic criterion instead of caste.
Another Obstacle
Another major assault on the 10 per cent quota law for poor among forward sections is the fact that it breaches the 50 per cent ceiling on reservation fixed by the SC, YFE said.
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