Maratha reservation: The Supreme Court has reserved its judgement on petitions difficult the constitutional validity of a Maharashtra law that grants reservation to the Maratha neighborhood in education and jobs. A 5-judge Constitution Bench of the Supreme Court also reserved the judgement on the situation of whether or not the major court’s 1992 verdict of capping reservation at 50 per cent requires re-examination.
During the hearing on Thursday, Justice Ashok Bhushan stated that all reservations may perhaps go and only EWS (Economically Weaker Sections) may perhaps stay. “You may be right. This may be a beginning. All reservations may go and only EWS (Economically Weaker Sections) may remain. But these are policy matters,” Bhushan stated right after Advocate Shriram P Pingle contended that caste-based reservations have been getting politicised.
Pingle told the bench that “the elephant that needs to be addressed in the room is caste”. The Indra Sawhney judgement, he stated, recognised caste as a ground for extending reservations but the endeavour requires to be created to get rid of caste-based reservations in a phased manner. To this, the bench stated these “thoughts” have been “very radical and good” but it was for the government to take a selection that caste and reservation need to go. “That is for Parliament and the legislature. It is a welcome idea…When the Constitution was enacted, the object was a caste-less, egalitarian society,” stated Justice Bhushan.
Further, Pingle stated the Mandal Commission list was used to contain caste which did not exist in the state. After the Indra Sawhney judgment, he stated, more than one hundred castes have been incorporated. He stated more than-reservation was anti-reservation and added that the existing case had a bigger magnitude on the social life of the nation, it may perhaps be suitable to contemplate all the pending situations and take a holistic view.
However, Senior Advocate Shyam Divan, appearing for the petitioners opposing the Maratha reservation law, stated that the Sawhney judgement require not be reconsidered. He stated the 50 per cent limit need to be retained. The nation, he stated, was more equal now than it was 70 years ago and the concentrate ought to now be on other types of affirmative action. If the 50 per cent limit is breached, Diwan stated, there will be political stress not to minimize reservation.