Jabalpur (Madhya Pradesh): State government got a concurrence for implementation of 27% OBC reservation in matters other than those under judicial scrutiny in MP high court, in a legal opinion sought from advocate general.
In his opinion advocate general stated that MP high court had not restrained state government from implementing 27% OBC reservation in matters except recruitment of teachers, medical officers and NEET-PG admissions.
So, the MP government could implement it in recruitment to all its department, admissions to educational institutes, stated AG in his legal opinion. AG gave the opinion on August 18 in an issue related to recruitment to various posts in state through National Health Mission (NHM).
The MP government through an ordinance on March 8 2019, increased reservation for OBC category to 27% from 14%, breaching 50% limit.
Later, the state assembly in the same March itself passed the ordinance to enact an act giving 27% reservation to OBC category.
But, the increased OBC reservation in state has kick started a controversy leading to multiple litigations challenging the validity of the law before MP high court.
The petitioners before the MP High court challenged the law on the basis of the supreme court judgement of 1992 passed in the Indra Sawhney case, commonly known as Mandal judgement, prescribing the upper limit of reservation to 50%.
The apex court, recently struck down a similar provision of Maharashtra law providing reservation to the Maratha community raising outer limits of reservation beyond the 50%.
A five-judge constitution bench while nullifying the Maharashtra quota law said, “The 50% rule…is to fulfil the objective of equality as in grafted in article 40 of which article 15 and 16 are facets…to change the 50 %limit is to have a society which is not founded on equality but based on caste rule.”
“The democracy is an essential feature of our constitution and part of our basic structure. If the reservation goes above 50% limit it will be slippery slope, the political pressure, make it hardly to rescue the same,” the bench added.
In case of Madhya Pradesh, the overall reservation was raised to 73% with implementation 10 % EWS quota along with increased OBC reservation.
