Centre to seek vacation of SC's stay on OBC quota

New Delhi, Apr 15 (UNI) The Centre is going to file an appliction tomorrow in the Supreme Court seeking vacation of the interim stay granted against the government notification providing 27 per cent reservation for OBCs seats in central-run institutions of higher education.

The government's could not be filed on Friday last because of serious differences in the cabinet on the issue of the stand to be taken in the court.

Finally, HRD Minister Arjun Singh seems to have prevailed as the government is likely to take a stand against exclusion of "creamy layer" from reservation benefits.

The government is also going to pray that the issue be referred to a constitutional bench as substansial questions of law and public importance are involved.

According to the government since the Mandal Commission Report was upheld by a nine-judge-bench of the court in the Indira Sawnhey versus Union of India case, thus providing the 1931 census data should be taken as valid and for 27 per cent reservation for OBCs in the institutions such as IIMs, IITs and postgraduate institutes of medical education as according to the Mandal Commission Report the percentage of the OBCs in the population was 52.

Petitioners against the reservation decision had questioned the report and sort a review of it.

A bench headed by Justice Arijit Passayat had stayed the government notification providing reservation for OBCs in postgraduate institutions on the grounds that no authentic data was available about the percentage of OBCs in the population.

The reservation benefits were suppose to come in effect from academic session 2007-08.

UNI