But the Bench sought to know the urgency behind the Act. ‘‘You wait for two years There should not be urgency. If this Act was enacted after complete study, there would not be any difficulty in going ahead with it,’’ the Bench said, asking the ASG, ‘‘Don’t you think that the 1931 data has lost its efficacy’’.

Nariman, who made it clear that he was not seeking setting aside of the Act but merely deferment of implementation of the Act, said that it did not lay down the criteria on the basis of which the Centre will determine the socially and economically backward class. It was also not necessary that a upper caste person was economically well-off and a socially backward person educationally backward, he said.

“Without proper methodology for determination of OBCs, we cannot go ahead with admissions for 2007,” he said.

According to Nariman, the Act was also silent on excluding the “creamy layer” among backward castes from the benefit of reservation. “Who forms the creamy layer has been well settled by a set of judgments,” he said, adding that “ex-facie there has been no exclusion of creamy layer from the benefit of reservation in the Act.”