Bhopal: The Madhya Pradesh High Court on Tuesday stayed the state government’s ordinance increasing reservation for Other Backward Classes (OBC) category to 27 per cent from the earlier 14 per cent. The Congress government in the state had issued an ordinance on March 8 increasing the reservation in the OBC category to 27 per cent.
The double bench of justice RS Jha and Sanjay Dwivedi ordered here on Tuesday that the MBBS counselling which gets underway from March 25 would be undertaken as per 14 per cent reservation to OBCs.
The HC served notice to Dept of Medical Education, MP–seeking a reply on the matter within a week’s time.
Referring to constitutional provision which mandates that total percentage of reservation offered on the basis of caste canot be more than 50 per cent, medicos including Asita Dubey from Jabalpur, Richa Pandey and Sumna Singh from Bhopal, had filed the petition opposing the MP government’s move of hiking OBC reservation quota from existing 14 per cent to 27 per cent.
The Kamal Nath government through a gazette notification days ago had announced to hike reservation quota for OBCs in the state to 27 per cent at par with the same offered by the central government. The Congress government has also claimed it’s the first among state governments to have done so.
In accordance with the legal ceiling of 50 per cent, Madhya Pradesh till now offers 16 per cent reservation to SCs, 20 per cent to STs and 14 per cent to Other Backward Categories (OBCs).
The MP government while raising the OBC quota had contested that OBCs comprise around 52 per cent of the total population of the state so increasing their quota was necessary to safeguards interests of the community. The decision to hike OBC quota was approved by Kamal Nath cabinet on March 6.