New Delhi, Sept. 15: The Supreme Court has clarified that if OBC candidates cannot fill up the 27 per cent quota reserved for them in central education institutions, the vacant seats should go to general category students.

“Where is the confusion? Para 278 of our judgment clearly says this,” a five-judge bench said today, reacting to a petition filed by former IIT Chennai director C.V. Indeerasan.

The petition claimed there was confusion on this point in the court’s April 10 judgment, and it should clarify its stand.

But the court had then said whenever non-creamy layer Other Backward Classes “fail to fill” the 27 per cent reservation, the remaining seats would “revert” to general category students.

“These seats cannot be allowed to go vacant, they should go to the unreserved. Allowing it to go waste is not in the interest of the nation,” the court had said. “After all, the intention of increasing seats was only to provide better educational facilities to more candidates.”

The petitioner claimed that 432 seats had been lying vacant in the IITs and the IIMs and would go waste as they were not being filled by meritorious candidates from the general category. The HRD ministry, the former IIT director added, was not filling up the vacancies, which amounted to contempt of court.

The Centre, represented by solicitor-general G.E. Vahanvati, said it would get back to the court with the exact number of seats vacant.

Indeerasan also sought a clarification on the reduction of marks permissible for OBC candidates. On this matter, one of the judges said the difference in cut-offs for general category and OBC students should be five marks. Another judge said it should not be more than 10.

Indeerasan’s counsel K.K. Venugopal said such a huge difference would affect the merit criterion.

The case will again come up for hearing on September 29.