A formal decision will be taken after representatives of the UPA and the Left Coordination Committee meet, most likely after the SAARC summit ends.
NEW DELHI: The UPA government is deliberating the option of moving the Supreme Court to vacate its interim stay on the implementation of 27 per cent quota for Other Backward Classes in institutions of higher education.
A formal decision will be taken after representatives of the UPA and the Left Coordination Committee meet, most likely after the SAARC summit ends. But opinion within government is consolidating around the view that the pro-quota factions within the combine might be assuaged if the apex court were to be approached.
The establishment’s legal experts have been working intensely to prepare the government’s case. According to a senior law ministry official, the government is likely to cite the ruling of a nine-judge bench of the Supreme Court, which upheld the reservation of jobs for OBCs on the basis of the 1931 census.
“The 1931 data was good enough to persuade the nine-judge bench,” the official said. “There is no reason why it should not be so in the present case.”
The court’s stay on caste-based quotas for admissions to IIMs, IITs, and other premier institutions has polarised the polity.
The latter’s political managers are conscious that the issue has been emotive, particularly in Tamil Nadu. They also recognise the strong views on the issue of some of the combine’s allies, principally the DMK.
The government is likely to give an undertaking to the Supreme Court that it is prepared to furnish, and abide by, any new data that is made available in the future. But in the interim it will argue forcefully for the existing census figures to be accepted. “It is not as if we have held back any data,” a legal expert from the government said. “We are going ahead with whatever is available with us.”
Ordering a fresh census or a sample survey is a complicated option. In order to be implemented, it would require a political consensus within the UPA and its supporting parties, as well as the opposition.
The government is anxious to prevent the situation from boiling into a full-blown crisis. The UPA coordination committee meeting will be followed by an all-party meeting in which an effort will be made to adopt a unified strategy to quell the polarisation of the country.
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