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Supreme Court allows 69% quota in Tamil Nadu

But says the government would have to satisfy the state backward classes commission that there’s genuine need for additional quota.

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The DMK government in Tamil Nadu (TN) received a major boost on Tuesday, ahead of next year’s assembly elections, when the Supreme Court (SC) allowed it to continue with the policy of providing 69% reservation in jobs and school/college admissions to SCs, STs and backward classes.

A bench of chief justice SH Kapadia and justices KS Radhakrishnan and Swatanter Kumar, however, put a rider, saying the government would have to satisfy the state backward classes commission (BCC) that there’s genuine need for additional quota.

A constitution bench of the apex court, while deciding whether the VP Singh government was just in implementing Mandal commission recommendations to provide quota to OBCs, had capped reservations at 50%. The limit could be exceeded only in compelling circumstances, it had said.

Keeping this judgment in sight, SC asked the TN government to revisit its policy of providing excess reservation in jobs and educational institutions to backward classes. The government would provide quantifiable population data to BCC.

On May 13, 2008, SC had directed the TN government to create additional seats in medical science, engineering and other professional courses for the academic year 2008-2009, so that general category students didn’t suffer due to the controversial 69% reservation policy.

NGO Voice had challenged the constitutional validity of the TN Reservation Act providing hiked quota in public employment and educational institutions in 1994.

But the government said the 50% quota cap in the Mandal case judgment would not apply to TN as, according to the 1991 census, the percentage of SCs, STs and backward classes in relation to the state’s total population was 88.

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