The Supreme Court will pronounce its judgment on Wednesday on a batch of petitions challenging the validity of the Maharashtra State Reservation for Socially and Educationally Backward Classes (SEBC) Act, which extends reservation to the Maratha community in public education and employment.
The judgment will be delivered by a Constitution bench of Justices Ashok Bhushan, L Nageswara Rao, S Abdul Nazeer, Hemant Gupta and S Ravindra Bhat. The court had reserved its judgement in the matter on March 26, 2021. A nine-judge Constitution Bench of the Supreme Court had in Indra Sawhney case held that Article 16(4) of the Constitution does not confer reservation in promotions, but only reservation in appointments.
It was also held that the ceiling of 50 per cent in reservations cannot be breached. Various States governments including Maharashtra government had urged the Supreme Court to reconsider the Indra Sawhney ruling, saying that there was considerable divergence in views among the judges on the Bench in the case and the 50 percent cap was decided without cogent data.
Since, the Indra Sawhney case was decided by a nine-judge Bench, they had asked for referring the case to a Bench of eleven judges.
