Supreme Court rejects the plea to stay 10% EWS reservation 

Supreme Court.

New Delhi: The Supreme Court rejected to stay the implementation of 10 per cent quota to “economically weaker sections” of the unreserved category and issued a notice to the Centre on the fresh plea challenging the constitutional amendment, on Friday.

Tehseen Poonawala, a political activist, filed the plea contending that backwardness for the purpose of reservation cannot be defined by “economic status alone”, further challenging the Constitution (103rd Amendment) Act, 2019.

While pointing out that overall reservation cannot exceed 50 per cent, as per the 1992 apex court verdict, the plea said: “The constitutional amendment formally violated the law laid down by the Supreme Court’s 1992 ruling in Indira Sawhney case … and the principle that backwardness for the purposes of reservation cannot be defined on economic status alone but must be rooted in social exclusion.”

The apex court had earlier declined to stay the ten per cent reservation introduced by the BJP-led NDA government and said, “No stay for the present,” on January 25.

Protests against the quota have already started and the DMK even filed a case against it in the Madras high court.

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