AIIMS doctors at Mahatma Gandhi’s samadhi after the verdict. Picture by Prem Singh

What are the ways the government can try to get around the court stay on the Other Backward Classes education quota?

One, it can file a review petition against the order, which will be heard by the same bench.

Two, it can seek a modification of the order, requesting the court to bar its application if the admission process has begun and examinations or interviews conducted (they have been in the Indian Institutes of Management but not in the Indian Institutes of Technology).

Three, it can ask for the hearing of the main petition, which challenges the constitutional validity of the quota law, to be advanced from August to a date before June, when the academic session starts. It can then try to get the case referred to a Constitution bench and hope the petition is thrown out.

Suppose none of the options works for the Centre. What happens then to the OBC candidates who have cleared the Common Admission Test and appeared for the interview?

They cannot get the benefit of reservation.

However, the IIMs in Ahmedabad, Bangalore and Calcutta independently held meetings today to see if anything can be done for these students. As of now, they haven’t found a solution. Time is running out with the deadline for the final admissions list being April 12.

If any OBC candidate has scored so high that he would have made it even in the general category, will he be admitted?

Yes, definitely, under the general category.

If the OBC candidates who are left out move court against the IIMs, what will be the B-schools’ defence?

They will claim they were bound by the government circular to invite applications under the OBC quota. And that in refusing the benefit of reservation, they were merely following the court’s order, for which they cannot be dragged to court.

If the OBC quota cannot be introduced, can the IIMs fill the seats earmarked for them with general candidates? After all, the court has barred only the operation of the OBC quota, not the increase in seats planned to make room for the quota.

Yes, if they go ahead with the seat increase. The court order says general candidates, too, have a right to the extra seats. At least one of the B-schools — IIM Calcutta — hopes to do exactly that. The final decision, though, rests with the Union human resource development ministry.

However, not all the extra seats can go to general candidates — 22.5 per cent must be reserved for Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe students in keeping with the SC/ST quota.

Will the IIMs roll back the fee hikes planned, at least partly, to fund the seat increase?

They wouldn’t want to. Which is one important reason they wouldn’t want a seat rollback either. They want the money, and need the seat increase — OBC or general — to justify it.

Besides, the seat increase can only be one of many reasons for the fee hike, and the IIMs may not necessarily admit that it is an important reason. The final decision rests with the HRD ministry.

Can Parliament intervene to find a way around the court stay?

It’s very unlikely that it will — there’s hardly any justifiable reason to. The court has neither ruled the quota law invalid nor questioned Parliament’s competence to provide for reservation.

Will an ordinance work?

There is no bar against it, but it is certain to come before the court for scrutiny and could be stayed again. The government is unlikely to want another embarrassment.

Parliament or the executive can always intervene, but the final arbiter is the Supreme Court, whose jurisdiction to scrutinise the validity of their actions cannot be barred.

There are precedents of Parliament or the government overreaching court orders, but only after the final judgment.

For instance, the Centre last year promulgated an ordinance to bypass a Calcutta High Court order invalidating certificates in teacher education from 115 unrecognised institutes. The National Council For Teacher Education (Amendment and Validation) Ordinance 2006 allowed the unregistered institutes to seek recognition with retrospective effect.