Will stall scrapping of Muslim quota till May 9: Karnataka to Supreme Court

NEW DEHI: The Karnataka government on Tuesday assured the Supreme Court that it would not implement its decision to scrap 4% quota for OBC Muslims “until further orders”. Till then, the earlier quota regime will continue to “hold the field”.
The assurance was given by solicitor general Tushar Mehta, who on behalf of the state, informed a bench of Justices K M Joseph and B V Nagarathna that the impugned decision would not be implemented and no admission and appointment would be done by the Karnataka government on the basis of the notification till the next date of hearing. The assurance was given by the SG while seeking adjournment of hearing on a batch of petitions challenging the government’s decision.
Seeking deferrment of hearing, Mehta said he would not be able to asssist the court as he would be busy before a Constitution bench in the same-sex marriage case. His plea was strongly objected by the petitioners and senior advocate Dushyant Dave submitted that the case had been adjourned four times. Dave submitted that the matter needed to be adjudicated at the earliest as statements on scrapping of the reservation policy for Muslims were being made by politicians.

The bench, after recording the statement of the solicitor general, deferred the hearing and posted it for May 9.
In the previous hearing on April 13, the court had prima facie remarked that the state’s decision to scrap the quota was based on “absolutely fallacious assumptions”. “The Karnataka government’s decision to raise 2% quotas for Vokkaliga, Lingayat each; scrapping 4% OBC quota for Muslims is prima facie shaky and flawed,” the court said.
At the fag end of its term, the BJP government had decided to abolish the 4% reservation for Muslims under the 2-B category. The quota was later split into two and distributed among Vokkaligas in 2-C category and Lingayats in 2-D category. Vokkaligas and Lingayats are the two major dominant communities of Karnataka.