A former Chief Justice of the Orissa High Court and now a Congress MP from Chitradurga in Karnataka, Justice H Y Hanumanthappa today added a twist to the debate on reservation for OBCs in institutions of higher education. He asked for “extraordinary solutions and procedures” to make sure that the fate of “tens of thousands of OBC students (who) are likely to lose the opportunity provided by the Constitution (93rd Amendment) Act and subsequent law” can be redeemed.

A two-judge Bench of the Supreme Court referred the matter to a higher bench yesterday. The Supreme Court had earlier stayed the operation of the law that was putting into effect the 93rd amendment to the Constitution (passed unanimously by Parliament on January 20, 2006) which makes it possible to reserve 27 per cent of seats for socially and educationally backward classes in publicly funded higher education institutions.

Justice Hanumanthappa, in a one-page statement, has urged an “early decision in the matter”, saying that “it is not just one year that would be lost to the unfortunate youth belonging to deprived sections, but the cascading ill effects of this delay in denial of social justice would adversely impact generations to come”. His statement says OBCs have waited for “56 long years. The least that the OBCs can expect from the Constitutional scheme is that they would not have to wait any further”.

The statement also says that the “Executive, Judiciary or the Legislature are expected to do whatever is necessary so that the faith of the poor and the deprived in the Constitutional scheme is never eroded. Any such erosion would be catastrophic. We are already experiencing the symptoms of erosion of faith in institutions and processes in several parts of the country”.

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