Centre seeks vacation of Cal HC order on IIMs quota

Agencies Posted: May 15, 2008 at 1143 hrs
New Delhi, May 15: The Centre on Thursday approached the Supreme Court seeking vacation of the Calcutta High Court order staying the implementation of a government memorandum relating to 27 per cent quota for OBCs in post graduate courses in IIMs.

A Bench headed by Chief Justice K G Balakrishnan allowed the plea of Solicitor General G E Vahanvati to include the matter for hearing in the mentioning list on Friday.

The Calcutta High Court on Wednesday 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 Friday.

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.