The Supreme Court on Friday refused to grant interim stay on the Andhra Pradesh HC order quashing the state’s notification for inter-shifting of the groups of backward communities for the purpose of reservation, saying it would adversely affect the students in the midway of the admission process.
Hearing an appeal of the Andhra Pradesh government against the high court’s order quashing its notification on inter-group shifting of some of the socially and economically backward communities, a bench headed by Chief Justice S.H. Kapadia said any direction would only be issued after the completion of the admission process.
Eventually the bench of Justices K.S. Radhakrishnan and Swatanter Kumar deferred passing of any interim order till August 26. Counsel for different parties said it was not fully over in all the institutions as some of them have yet to complete the final counselling. “If the admission process is not complete, we don’t want to disturb it. At this stage we don’t want to create any problem for the students,” the CJI said.
Senior advocate T.R. Andhyarujina, appearing for some of the petitioners, questioned the rationale of the government decision for shifting of the communities.
“Too many people are coming in one group creating problem to the communities already listed in that group,” he said adding this was creating “unnecessary conflicts” when there was high competition for better opportunities and sought stay on the entire process.
Several other lawyers appearing for different groups said “first there must be a study of the population of different groups and then only inter-group adjustments can be done.”
It was explained to the top court that the state has divided SEBs in four categories — A, B, C, D — for the purpose of implementing the OBC quota in a “rationalised” manner on the recommendation of Anantharaman Commission in 1970, the government had made some inter-community adjustments by shifting certain communities from one group to other.
But the decision was struck down by the HC on the petitions of some representative of those communities whose sub-groups were affected due to such transfer to their group.