Chennai: The Madras High Court today quashed a special act allowing 10.5 per cent special internal reservation for the Vanniyakula Kshatriyas community, which falls under the Most Backward Community (MBC).
Justices M Duraiswamy and K. Murali Shankar allowed a batch of writ petitions filed in the principal seat of the High Court as well as its Madurai Bench challenging the validity of the law passed just hours before the model code of conduct came into force in the State in February for the Assembly election.
After the order was passed, advocate K Balu representing a group of petitioners supporting the reservation requested the court to suspend the order at least for a week for them to move an appeal in the Supreme Court.
‘If the order is not suspended, it will affect the prospects of students who have secured admission under the reservation,’ he said.
Refusing to accept the same, the bench said, ‘It has been made clear through an interim order that admissions and appointments made providing the reservation will be subject to the outcome of the pleas. Suspending the order will only complicate the issue.’
In a counter affidavit filed before the Madras High Court in response to a huge batch of cases that had challenged the law, the government termed as ‘baseless’ the charge that there was a political motive behind the enactment and that the law was passed hastily, before the notification of the Assembly elections this year, in violation of the Legislative Assembly rules.
‘In a democratic polity, an elected government cannot be barred from exercise of its power to make a policy to legislate any law during its tenure/until the last minute it holds power to meet the public opinion at large,’ the government said and pointed out that one C.N. Ramamurthy had filed a writ petition in the High Court in 2010 itself seeking internal reservation.
When the act was introduced, more than 20 petitions, mostly representing other communities of the MBC section, had approached the HC challenging the exclusive reservation for Vanniyars.
The petitioners argued that if Vanniyars are taking 10.5 per cent reservation, other MBC castes and Denotified Communities (DNCs) will be affected much.
‘If 10.5 per cent special reservation was given to Vanniyars, 25 communities in MBC and 65 DNCs will merely have the remaining 7 per cent of the reservation under the MBC quota. It will hurt us a lot. It will also affect the harmony among other communities coming under the MBC,’ the batch of petitions claimed.