The Supreme Court on Wednesday reserved verdict on petitions seeking uniformity in the criteria for OBC admissions to central universities, including the Delhi and Jawaharlal Nehru universities.
Last week a Bench of Justices R.V. Raveendran and A.K. Patnaik had referred the matter to Chief Justice of India S.H. Kapadia for posting it before another Bench. However, the CJI asked the same Bench to continue with the hearing.
The issue is whether students from the Other Backward Classes should be admitted on the basis of minimum eligibility marks or on the basis of cut-off marks for the OBC category which would be 10 per cent less than the cut-off fixed for the general category. The court was also asked to examine whether the cut-off marks and the minimum eligibility marks would be one and the same.
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It was argued that the impact of providing 10 per cent cut-off marks (viz marks of the last student admitted in the general category) would be disastrous as it would take away the benefit of 27 per cent quota for the OBCs.
What was contemplated under the law was that as against the cut-off prescribed for general category candidates as a group, the cut-off for the OBC would be 10 per cent below and not beyond. “Nowhere has it been provided that the OBC cut-off will be 10 per cent below the marks of the last candidate admitted in the general category,” it was submitted.
It was pointed out that in 2010-2011, out of 7,420 OBC seats in 31 colleges (out of 80) in Delhi University, only 3,396 seats were filled and the remaining seats reverted to the general category. As the cut-off marks for the general category were always higher (75 to 85 per cent), the OBC students could not meet the cut-off mark fixed for them, though it was 10 per cent less.
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It was argued that there was nothing wrong in institutions of excellence fixing higher threshold marks to maintain standards, but they could not operate the OBC reservation arbitrarily.
The Bench heard arguments from senior counsel K.K. Venugopal appearing for the former Director of IIT, Chennai, P.V. Indiresan; senior counsel P.P. Rao for one of the interveners, senior counsel Mariarputham, senior counsel A. Subba Rao and counsel Sanjay Parikh.