Maratha quota case: 50% restrict is ‘Lakshman Rekha’ for reservation, petitioners in SC

Every week after a five-judge Constitution bench of the Supreme Court stated it can think about whether or not the 1992 verdict within the Indira Sawhney case (popularly referred to as Mandal Commission case) — capping reservation at 50 per cent — by a nine-judge bench must be despatched to a bigger bench for a relook, petitioners in opposition to the Maratha reservation regulation on Monday opposed any reconsideration of the ceiling. They argued that such a transfer will go in opposition to the equality precept enshrined within the Constitution and that the 50 per cent restrict is the “Lakshman Rekha” that must be adopted by each State in granting reservation in jobs and schooling.
Appearing for the petitioners, Senior Advocate Arvind Datar on Monday advised the bench that the proper to equality is a meta proper, a proper above all rights. Articles 15, 16 of the Constitution, which allow the state to make provision for reservation, he stated, are supposed to advertise equality. “To change the 50 per cent limit is to have a society not founded on equality, but based on caste,” he stated.
The bench, headed by Justice Ashok Bhushan, and comprising Justices L Nageswara Rao, S Abdul Nazeer, Hemant Gupta, and S Ravindra Bhat, is listening to arguments on the constitutional validity of the Maharashtra State Reservation for Socially and Educationally Backward Classes (SEBC) Act, which the petitioners argue has taken the entire reservation past the 50 per cent restrict.
On Monday, Datar recalled how a number of states made provisions for quota shortly earlier than the Model Code of Conduct kicked in, and stated the 1992 verdict shouldn’t be revisited within the backdrop of “political considerations”. He referred to the ten.5 per cent reservation for Vanniya Kula Kshatriyar in Tamil Nadu this 12 months, the inclusion of Nadar Christians in OBC class in Kerala in 2014, and Madhya Pradesh extending the OBC quota from 14 to 27 per cent forward of the 2019 Lok Sabha polls.
Datar stated the 1992 verdict made a really restricted exception to the overall rule of the 50 per cent restrict, permitting relaxations in “extraordinary situations” and involving “far-flung areas”, including that “extreme caution has to be exercised” even in such instances. He stated the exception couldn’t have been for states like Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu or Karnataka, that are “relatively prosperous”, however far-flung distant areas which require particular therapy.

The Mandal Commission had in 1980 declared the Maratha neighborhood to be ahead and in 2000, the National Commission for Backward Classes rejected a request for inclusion of the neighborhood in backward lessons, saying that they had been “socially advanced and prestigious”, he stated.
“What is the extraordinary situation in the case of Maharashtra,” Datar requested, and stated that the state authorities’s stand that “Marathas are backward and that they form 30 per cent of the population is the extraordinary situation” isn’t appropriate. “The 50 per cent limit is the Lakshman Rekha that has to be followed by every State legislature in making reservations to public posts and education,” he stated.
Senior Advocate Shayam Divan, additionally showing for the petitioners, pointed to the Justice M G Gaikwad Commission’s report which fashioned the idea for Maharashtra to enact the 2018 regulation, and claimed it was flawed because it failed to contemplate that the neighborhood is politically organised and politically dominant. Such a neighborhood can’t be backward, he argued.

On the report attributing farmer suicides to the backwardness of the Maratha neighborhood, he stated the deaths had been as a consequence of a normal agrarian disaster and never as a consequence of backwardness.
The arguments remained inconclusive and can resume Tuesday.