SC to hear PIL against reservation on Monday

New Delhi, June 10 (UNI) The Supreme Court will hear a PIL challenging the Central government order providing for 27.5 per cent reservation for OBCs in educational institutions on Monday.

It may be recalled here that the Supreme Court on May 31 had directed the striking medicos to call off their strike and to restore health services throughout the country.

The Resident Doctors Association (RDA) of AIIMS and Maulana Azad Medical College (MAMC) sought a review of the Mandal Commission report challenging the assessment of the commission that the OBCs comprised 52 per cent of the total population of the country.

RDAs were not satisfied with the PIL pending in the Supreme Court as, according to them, the basic issue was of appointing an expert committee to review the government policy on reservation and the medicos demanded that if the expert committee differed with the findings of the Mandal Commission, then the report of the expert committee should prevail over the findings of the Mandal Commission.

The implementation of the Mandal Commission report by the VP Singh government in 1990 had sparked off nation-wide anti-reservation agitation in which large number of students immolated themselves to death. The Central government has been given eight weeks time by the court to file its response to the writ petition as well as to the application filed by the two RDAs.

The Supreme Court has already accepted the demand of the RDAs that no punitive action shall be taken against any doctor for participating in the strike, which started on May 13 following brutal police action against the agitating medicos in Mumbai.

The court also directed the Central Government to withdraw the termination orders if the doctors reported for duty within three days from May 31.

The court has assured all the concerned parties that their interests shall be taken care of and has asked the Central government to explain the basis of determining OBCs and the norms adopted for such determination.

The court has also ordered the government to come out with the modalities for implementing its reservation policy and also the norms for working out such modalities.

However, the court has refused to stay the impugned order passed by HRD Minister Arjun Singh.

Meanwhile, the government has already made it clear that it will implement the reservation policy for OBCs from the academic session of 2007.

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