Reserving Reservations!!!

The Supreme Court vacation ended. I now get to come back to my favourite topic ‘reservations’ once again.

On the 17^th of July , a Three judge Bench of the Supreme Court sat again to decide on the next steps to be taken as regards to the Centre’s move in increasing the OBC’s by the Central Educational Institutions (Reservation in Admission) Act, 2006 to 27%. From what I heard, Solicitor General Vahanvati decided to give one last shot at asking the Court to allow the Quota to be implemented from this Academic Year itself pending a decision by a Constitutional Bench. There was a great fur ore created by this move and opposing counsels Rajiv Dhawan and Mukul Rohtagi opposed the move by stating that a three judge bench cannot have the power to review a division bench order by Justice Pasayat in May. The Court finally announced;

- That the parties are to file their replies as to the Solicitor General’s argument by the 31^st of July.

- That the decision to transfer to a Constitutional Bench however would be taken by the end of next week.

I mentioned in my previous posts that the Supreme Court seems to be inclined towards the American way when it comes to reservations. If this is true, then this is bad news for those who want reservations in the Country. In late June, the United States SC decided Seattle School Dsitrict, a judgment that has partially overruled Brown v. Board of Education. This means that discrimination on the basis of race in admission of schools is now legal in the United States, with certain checks and balances. In the case the Court presents an idea of affirmative action that is something that the Indian Court has sought to borrow. The idea first arose in Grutter v. Bollinger and California v. Allan Bakke where the Court said that affirmative action, particularly in the admission process in universities, must be “narrowly tailored” to promote diversity, but not in such ways as would discriminate against those excluded from affirmative action because they do not belong to ethnic or racial minorities.

The above makes the stance taken by the Indian courts a lot of more confusing as we don’t know which way the Courts will go when it comes to laying down its judgment. For now, Waiting for the decision as to the Constitutional Bench sitting to come out.