New Delhi : The Supreme Court on Monday flung aside a private petition, backed by the Maharashtra government, for expeditious disposal of a writ petition pending before the Bombay High Court since 2014 on the previous Congress government”s decision to grant 16% reservation to Marathas in jobs and education in the state.
The Bench of Chief Justice T S Thakur and Justice A M Khanwilkar, instead, asked petitioner Vinod Narayan Patil to approach the High Court for “expeditious” hearing of the case.
The petitioner had moved the Apex Court citing the “urgency” citing the Maratha demonstrations in various parts of Maharashtra since the Bombay High Court had defied its order and not even fixed the matter for hearing since after it stayed the reservation on November 14, 2014.
The Supreme Court, however, did not oblige him as it dismissed the petition, saying it sees “no reason to interfere with the order impugned.” It, however, tried to be helpful to the petitioner to the extent that it said: “We leave it to the petitioner to approach the High Court for an expeditious hearing of the matter, in which event, we expect the High Court to consider the prayer sympathetically.”
The High Court had in an interim order stayed the decision after faulting the data used by the state to back its assertion that the Maratha community was backward. It had also put on hold the 5% quota in public employment under a special backward class category to about 50 sub-castes among the Muslims while not disturbing a similar benefit to the backward Muslims in the state-owned and aided educational institutions.
The decision to grant reservation to Marathas and Muslims was taken by the erstwhile Congress-NCP government before the 2014 assembly elections.
