Already under judicial scrutiny, the Central Educational Institutions (Reservation in Admission) Act, 2006 will now face yet another petition filed against it in the Supreme Court today. The statute provides for 27 per cent reservation for OBCs in higher educational institutions.

The PIL filed by a charitable trust will be heard on May 8 when a bunch of petitions challenging the Act comes up for hearing. A directive in this regard came from a Bench headed by Justice B N Agarwal who directed that the matter be tagged along with the other petitions scheduled for hearing before another Bench headed by Justice Arijit Pasayat.

Citizens for Equality, the charitable trust having eminent professors from JNU as its trustees, has challenged the constitutional validity of the Act. It has also sought quashing of the 93rd Amendment Act by which Article 15(5) was inserted in the Constitution for enabling states to make special provisions for providing reservations to educationally and socially backward classes.

The petition contends that the amendment is violative of the basic structure of the Constitution.

The Trust has alleged that the policy of reservation suffers from serious constitutional and legal infirmities and needs to be replaced by rational policy of affirmative action for uplifting weaker sections, particularly the Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes and OBCs.

It says in the quota policy there is no attempt to remove educational disparities among backward classes, including the SCs and STs and adds that the present policy will keep them backward forever in the absence of any effort to provide free and compulsory education to all children up to class 12.

... contd.