The Bombay High Court on Wednesday said after perusal of the State Backward Class Commission report, it will decide if the petitioners challenging the reservation provided to the Maratha community should get the whole report or a truncated version.
A division bench of Justice Ranjit More and Justice Bharati Dangre said that it will start the final hearing into the petitions from February 6. “The state government, till then, shall continue its statement that no appointments would be made,” the bench said. On Wednesday, the bench also directed the state government to submit the report to it.
The court was hearing three petitions filed by advocates Jaishri Patil and Sanjeet Shukla and Dr Uday Dhople and others challenging a notification published by the Government of Maharashtra on November 30, 2018, to provide 16 per cent reservation to the Maratha community.
Senior Counsel V A Thorat for the state government told the court that the entire report cannot be given to the petitioners. Thorat said they are willing to submit the entire report, running into 3,000 pages, and out of that 20 pages that depict the Maratha Community’s history will be masked. He added that some parts in the report would create communal tension and law and order problem.
Justice More said: “We cannot proceed until they (petitioners) get the copy of the report.”
Thorat further told the court that the state government is not willing to continue with the statement that no appointments would be made, because there is a massive backlog of vacancies in government jobs that need to be filled up immediately.
The bench on this said that if the state government was not willing to continue the statement, then the court would be compelled to pass orders.
Last week, the state government, in an affidavit before the court, said 16 per cent reservation to the Marartha community has been given on the basis of its “social, educational and economical backwardness” and considering the inadequacy of the representation of the Maratha community in public employment.
The 38-page affidavit filed by Shivaji Daud, the secretary, General Administration Department, Mantralaya, states that the petitions seeking to stay the act at the interim stage, deserve to be rejected. The affidavit states that while the state government had taken the decision based on data, surveys, facts and figures, statistics, record, analysis, investigation and research etc, none of the petitioners have bothered to place anything on record to substantiate their allegations to challenge the act.
The act only seeks to “fulfill the constitutional duty of ensuring adequate representation to a socially backward class of citizens in educational institutions and in public services, in order to alleviate the community from its social and educational backwardness”, the affidavit says.
