Bhopal (Madhya Pradesh): The High Court principal bench in Jabalpur on Monday directed all stakeholders, including counsels, to submit any documents or material they wish to place on record before April 15, as regular hearings in matters related to 27% OBC reservation will commence from that date. The court said the cases are to be adjudicated within a period of two months.
The direction follows the Supreme Court order dated February 19, 2026. The first hearing was conducted on Monday by a division bench comprising Chief Justice Sanjeev Sachdeva and Justice Vinay Saraf.
The High Court said that if the records are available with the counsel, they should be filed in digital format for consideration during the hearing. The Chief Justice also directed the High Court Registry to list all matters pertaining to OBC reservation together on April 2, 2026.
Aditya Sanghi, counsel for the petitioners challenging the OBC reservation, submitted that Petition No. 5901/2019 serves as the lead petition in the matter, in which an interim order dated March 19, 2019 remains in force.
Senior advocate Rameshwar Singh Thakur, appointed as special counsel for the Government of Madhya Pradesh, along with Varun Thakur, representing the intervenors, opposed this submission. They argued that Petition No. 5901/2019 cannot be treated as the lead petition as it challenges the OBC Reservation Ordinance dated March 8, 2019, which has since lapsed.
They submitted that the provisions were enacted into law on July 14, 2019 and there is currently no stay order against it. Hence, the petition has become infructuous and should be dismissed. The court was also informed that all four petitioners hold MBBS and MD degrees and run their own hospitals, and therefore the petition cannot be treated as a Public Interest Litigation.
