Setting at rest all speculation, the Supreme Court on Thursday said a five-member constitutional bench will hear the contentious 27 per cent quota for the OBC in higher educational institutions and other related issues from August 7 on regular basis.

A three-member bench headed by Chief Justice K G Balakrishnan said the special bench would deal with the 30 questions, including the validity of the 93rd amendment, the provision of Central Educational Institutions (Reservation in Admission) Act 2006 providing 27 per cent reservation for OBCs and Union government’s power on implementing such policy without any basis.

The court would also decide on other questions submitted before a two-judge bench earlier such as whether reservation should be only for the people from creamy layer or whether caste should be the only criteria for reservation or its applicability in private educational institutes.

The counsel appearing for the petitioners prayed for three to four weeks to complete the arguments. The court said it would not be possible to devote so much of time for the arguments and only the main questions would be dealt with. Written arguments could be submitted before the start of the arguments so that time could be saved, the court observed.

When Solicitor General G E Vahanvati insisted for hearing the Centre’s petition to vacate the stay on implementation of the Act from this academic session, the court said it would hear the arguments on July 31.

The government had moved an application seeking vacation of the March 29 interim order staying the implementation of the provision of Act providing 27 per cent reservation for OBCs.

Counsel for the Right for Equality, the organisation spearheading the anti-quota movement, had opposed the application saying that the government had on earlier occasion taken a similar plea for lifting the stay but it was rejected by the court saying it was unreasonable.

Additional Solicitor General (ASG) Gopal Subramanium had submitted that the Central Educational Institutions (Reservation in Admission) Act 2006 protected the number of seats available to the general category in the previous academic year while increasing the seats for socially and educationally backward classes and proportionately for the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes.