New Delhi, Oct. 14: The Supreme Court today clarified that seats reserved for Other Backward Classes at central institutes of learning could not be kept vacant and would have to be filled up with eligible general category students if needed.
A five-judge Constitution bench said if seats remained vacant under the 27 per cent OBC quota, they could not be carried forward, and all seats would have to be filled up in the first year itself.
Institutes enforcing the quota in three phases of 9 per cent each could not accumulate vacancies and allot them to the general category in the final year, the bench, headed by Chief Justice K.G. Balakrishnan, added.
“The vacant seats cannot be filled in a staggered manner,” the bench said.
“That would defeat the very purpose of our judgment,” the court added, referring to its April 10 ruling that upheld the 27 per cent quota.
The bench said all vacancies would have to be filled by October, when admissions generally close for an academic session.
The court also clarified that the difference between the cut-offs for the reserved and general categories could not be more than 10 per cent. It had earlier said the difference could not be more than 10 marks.
The clarifications came on a day anti-reservation groups and individuals moved the court against the Centre’s decision to raise the income ceiling for the creamy layer from Rs 2.5 lakh a year to Rs 4.5 lakh, which they said was a “poll gimmick”.
The Union cabinet had on October 3 raised the limit so that OBC students whose annual family income was under Rs 4.5 lakh could benefit from the 27 per cent quota.
Senior counsel K.K. Venugopal, who appeared for former IIT Chennai director C.V. Indeerasan, said the relaxation was an attempt to circumvent the court’s April 10 ruling, which upheld the reservation with the rider that the creamy layer be kept out of its ambit.
Officials said the hike in the creamy layer cut-off could help around 1.5 lakh more OBC students seeking admission to institutions of higher learning run by the central government.
An official at the human resource development ministry said 1.5 lakh OBC students — with yearly family incomes between Rs 2.5 lakh and Rs 4.5 lakh — could not benefit from the quota this year.
Another official argued that overall increase in incomes had forced the upward revision of the ceiling. He said the recent hike from the earlier limit, set in 2004, was aimed at ensuring that the same percentage of OBC population that made up the “non-creamy layer” four years back continued in that bracket now. But Venugopal, whose client had also challenged the 27 per cent quota, said an annual income of Rs 4.5 lakh amounted to Rs 38,000 a month.
“How many OBC families have such incomes?” he wondered. “This effectively mops up any possible vacancies in this category by filling it up with high-class OBCs,” he said.
He pointed out that the court had earlier struck down as unrealistic a recommendation to raise the annual income ceiling to Rs 3 lakh.
But the government, he said, had now fixed the limit at Rs 4.5 lakh “just because elections” were round the corner.
The bench assured him it would take the “cream” out of the “creamy layer” and asked those opposed to the move to file a petition.
The court will hear petitions on this issue in November.
