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Calcutta HC stay on OBC quota: Centre moves SC
Source: PTI
May 15, 2008

Centre on Thursday approached the Supreme Court to seek vacation of the Calcutta High Court order -- staying the implementation of a government memorandum relating to 27 per cent quota for Other Backward Classes -- in postgraduate course in the Indian Institute of Management - Calcutta.

A bench headed by Chief Justice K G Balakrishnan allowed the plea of Solicitor General G E Vahanvati to include the matter for hearing in the mentioning list on Friday.

The Calcutta High Court on Wednesday stayed the quota for OBCs in post-graduate courses in the Indian Institute of Management, Calcutta, and stopped interview of OBC candidates for the same.

Justice Maharaj Sinha, in an ex-parte interim order, granted the stay on a petition by Sayan Guha, a B-Tech student challenging the Human Resource Development Ministry's memorandum and also the IIM-C interview scheduled for Friday.

The interim order stayed the operation of the reservation clause of the IIM prospectus and also the resolution of office memorandum dated April 20, 2008, passed by the HRD ministry.

The matter would come up for hearing again on June 9.

IIM-C had scheduled the special interview of OBC students following the HRD memorandum.

Guha's counsels Kishore Dutta and Nilava Bandopadhyay told the court that the office memo and the subsequent reservation clause were in violation of the April 10 Supreme Court order on reservation of OBCs, which had set a yardstick for such quotas and defined the creamy layer, which would be out of the purview of reservation.

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