“Reservation is not at odds with merit but furthers its distributive consequences,” a two-judge bench, comprising Justice DY Chandrachud and Justice AS Bopanna said.
The court said it would rule on the legality of the income criteria to avail of Economically Weaker Sections (EWS) quotas in March.
The government had introduced 27% OBC and 10% EWS reservation for admissions to UG and PG all India quota seats from this academic year. Some students had challenged this in court. But the court ruled in favour of allowing both for this year and had allowed medical counselling to resume with both the quotas.
Reservations, it said, were impermissible only in super-specialisation courses as per earlier court rulings but not at the UG and PG level.
The issue here is whether after graduation, an individual is entitled to reservation on the grounds that they belong to a class that suffers from social and educational backwardness, it said. “It cannot be said that the impact of backwardness simply disappears because a candidate has a graduate qualification. Indeed, a graduate qualification may provide certain social and economic mobility, but that by itself does not create parity between forward classes and backward classes,” it stated.
“An assertion of over-inclusion, where undeserving candidates are said to be benefitting from reservation as OBC candidates, cannot be made as those who fall in the creamy layer are excluded from taking the benefit of reservation. Thus, we find that there is no prohibition in introducing reservation for socially and educationally backward classes (or OBCs) in PG courses,” the court said.
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