First challenge to reservation for Marathas in Bombay HC
MUMBAI: Days after Maharashtra granted 16% quota in jobs and education to the Marathas, a civil society group challenged the decision in the Bombay high court on Monday even as the state government approached the Supreme Court with a request to not pass any orders without listening to its arguments.
The 16% quota to the community that makes up roughly 30% of the state’s population took the quantum of caste-based quota in the state to 68%, well past the top court’s mandated limit of 50%. A previous move by the then Congress-Nationalist Congress Party government in 2014 to grant quotas to the community had also been struck down by the Bombay high court on similar grounds.
Dr Jayashree Patil, a member of the Indian Constitutional Council, filed a public interest litigation that said the move violated the Supreme Court’s cap of 50% on caste-based quotas and how a section of the Maratha community — the Kunbi-Marathas — already availed quotas under the Other Backward Classes (OBC) category under a 1984 order. The plea said the additional reservation would only create a “class within a class”, affecting those who do not belong to any reserved category.
“The reservation is invalid and this quota means the open category is left with only 32%,” said Patil’s advocate Gunaratan Sadavarte.
He said that he is likely to mention the petition before a division bench of chief justice NH Patil and justice MS Karnik on December 6. The Indian Constitutional Council had previously challenged the 2014 Maratha quota order, which the high court struck down.
The state’s revenue minister, Chandrakant Patil, said on Monday that the government had appointed senior advocate Harish Salve to represent its case in the Bombay high court.
In the SC, the state government asked to be heard before any order on the matter was passed.
“Considering some people may challenge our decision, a caveat was filed by senior advocate Nishant Katneshwarkar on behalf of the state government in the Supreme Court,” said a senior official from the state general administration department. “The caveat will provide an opportunity to the state to file its say before the court decides to give any interim relief to petitioners.”