TIMESNOW.tv - Latest Breaking News, Big News Stories, News Videos - Calcutta HC stays quotas in IIM & IIT 5/14/2008 5:22:57 PM
Calcutta High Court building In a jolt to pro-reservationists, the Calcutta High Court today (May 14) stayed quota for OBCs in post-graduate courses in Indian Institute of Management, Calcutta, and stopped interview of OBC candidates for the same.
Justice Maharaj Sinha, in an ex-parte interim order, granted the stay on a petition by Sayan Guha, a B-Tech student challenging the HRD ministry's memorandum and also the IIM-C interview scheduled for tomorrow.
The interim order stayed till June nine the operation of the reservation clause of IIM prospectus and also the resolution of office memorandum dated April 20, 2008 passed by the HRD ministry.
The matter would come up for hearing again on June nine. IIM-C had scheduled the special interview of OBC students following the HRD memorandum.
Guha's counsels Kishore Dutta and Nilava Bandopadhyay told the court that the office memo and the subsequent reservation clause were in violation of the April 10 Supreme Court order on reservation of OBCs that had set a yardstick for such quotas and defined the creamy layer that would be out of the purview of reservation.
They said while the apex court had directed that graduates would not be considered for reservation, the HRD ministry had in violation of that passed an office memo to the effect that OBC students would get reservation in post-graduate courses.
No counsel appeared for the HRD ministry and IIM-C.
The Human Resource Development (HRD) Ministry had issued a directive to the Central
Educational Institutions (CIE) after the Supreme Court on April 10 upheld the 27 per cent reservation for OBCs excluding the creamy layer from its ambit. The directive stated that all CEIs other than those exempted in the act have to implement the 27 per quota for OBCs apart from 15 per cent for Schedule Caste’s (SCs) and 7.5 per cent for Schedule Tribe’s (STs) from this academic session.
(With inputs from PTI)