MP Congress leader Jaya Thakur has filed a review petition in the Supreme Court against its judgement upholding the validity of the 103rd Constitution amendment for 10 per cent reservation to economically weaker sections (EWS) persons in education and jobs.
She contended that 10 per cent EWS quota to only forward caste, was a breach of equality code amounting to discrimination.
"Neither the parliamentary debate while passing the impugned amendment nor the majority judgements give insights as to what rational was adopted to come to this figure of 10 per cent," her plea claimed.
It further added that the only ad-hoc commission established in this regard was the Sinho Commission and even this commission was unable to justify or give any reasoning for provisioning of 10 per cent reservation for the EWS category.
“In the present amendment, OBC/SC/ST are not entitled to take the benefits of the Reservation. This is in violation of Article 14 and 16 of the Constitution of India,” the petition said.
On November 7, four separate judgements were authored with different reasoning by a five-judge bench of the top court.
Justices Dinesh Maheshwari, Bela Trivedi and J B Pardiwala, in three separate judgments, upheld the validity of the 103rd amendment.
However, Justice S Ravindra Bhat along with then Chief Justice U U Lalit, in their minority verdict, had said the amendment providing a 10 per cent EWS quota has for the first time sanctioned an avowedly exclusionary, discriminatory principle, which is constitutionally unsound.
(Published 23 November 2022, 12:44 IST)
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