Congress leader moves SC seeking review of its order on 10% reservation to EWS

New Delhi: A plea was filed in the Supreme Court on Wednesday seeking review of its verdict upholding 10 per cent reservation introduced in 2019 for the Economically Weaker Sections (EWS) in admissions and government jobs that excluded the poor among the SC/ST/OBC categories.

Congress leader Jaya Thakur has filed the petition in the apex court seeking review of the November 7 verdict.

In the landmark judgment, a five-judge Constitution bench of the top court had said that the use of basic structure doctrine as a "sword" to "stultify" the State's effort to do economic justice cannot be countenanced.

It had delivered a 3:2 majority decision in favour of the 103rd Constitution amendment.

The reservation of 10 per cent vacancies in available vacancies/posts, in open competition on the basis of economic criterion will exclude all other classes of those above the demarcating line of such 10 per cent seats, said the review petition.

"Reservation in unaided institutions violates the fundamental right under Article 19(1)(g) of the Constitution. State cannot insist on private educational institutions, which receive no-aid from the state, to implement the state policy on reservation for granting admission on lesser percentage of marks i.e. on any criterion except merit," said the petition.

The 10 per cent reservation provided to the EWS of only forward castes is breach of equality code amounting to discrimina-tion, said the Congress leader in her petition.

"Neither the parliamentary debate while passing the impugned amendment nor the majority judgments give insights as to what rationale was adopted to come to this figure of 10 per cent," said the petition.

The total percentage of the Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes and Other Backward Classes is only 47.46 per cent in Central government services, despite reservation being in place for so long, said the review petition.

WITH AGENCY INPUTS