HC puts Centre, Haryana on notice

The Punjab and Haryana high court on Wednesday put Centre and Haryana government on notice on a plea challenging the Centre’s decision to grant 10% reservation for economically weaker sections in jobs and admissions to educational institutions.

The petition filed by a Hisar resident seeks quashing of the Constitution Act, 2019 and sought direction to Centre to not to implement the reservation by the state and Centre claiming that it was in violation of Supreme Court’s 1992 judgment in the Indira Sawhney case, in which upper ceiling for reservation was fixed at 50%. The high court has sought response by March 13.

The lawyers, SK Verma and Lal Bahadur Khowal had argued that the reservation cannot be availed by SCs, STs or OBCs, who are not just economically but socially backward too. There is no definition under the Constitution for the weaker sections.

Moreover, economically weaker sections have not faced any kind of social injustice or discrimination. It was also submitted that the law enacted is a step to hasten to finish the reservations based on the social backwardness and to introduce only the economic criteria for reservations.

There is no contemporaneous empirical data collected or published to know the status of economically weaker sections and that they require the benefit under the impugned Act more than the SCs/STs/OBCs, court was told.