SC declines stay on Maratha reservation order, issues notice to Maharashtra govt on appeal filed against quota

The Supreme Court declined to stay order on the Maratha reservation on Friday. It also said that the Maharashtra state government’s decision to grant reservation to Maratha people and the Bombay High Court’s verdict upholding its decision, cannot be implemented with retrospective effect. Supreme Court also issued a notice to the Maharashtra government on the appeal filed in the Maratha reservation case.

Maratha Reservation: Supreme Court issues notice in appeal challenging Bombay High Court verdict, no stay on judgment.

However, retrospective application of reservation from 2014, stayed.

— Bar and Bench (@barandbench) July 12, 2019

The Supreme Court on 8 July had agreed to hear on Friday a plea challenging the Bombay High Court’s decision to uphold the law by which the Maratha community would get a reservation in admissions and government jobs in Maharashtra. [caption id=“attachment_5579511” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  File image of Maratha community members holding a protest rally. PTI[/caption] A bench comprising Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi and Justices Deepak Gupta and Aniruddha Bose took note of the plea that the issue of Maratha quota needed an urgent hearing. It decided to fix the petition for deliberations on Friday. The plea was filed in the apex court by Sanjeet Shukla, a representative of the NGO Youth for Equality. It challenges the Bombay High Court order which upheld the constitutional validity of the quota for the Maratha community in education and government jobs in the state. The plea said the Socially and Educationally Backward Classes (SEBC) Act, which provided a 12 percent and a 13 percent quota to the Maratha community in education and jobs respectively, breached the 50 percent ceiling on reservation fixed by the apex court in its landmark judgment in the Indira Sawhney case, also known as the “Mandal verdict”. The Maharashtra government had also filed a caveat in the top court anticipating a challenge to the verdict passed by the high court, saying no ex-parte order should be passed on any plea challenging the 27 June judgment of the high court without hearing the state.   With inputs from agencies