Admission conundrum: Centre moves Supreme Court on quotas

Center also pleaded for setting up of a five-member Constitution Bench to hear the matter. Filing a clarification application two weeks after the apex court had stayed the provision in the central law enabling reservation for the OBCs, the Government also opposed exclusion of creamy layer from the benefit of reservation.

The government maintained that the decision of the nine-judge Constitution Bench in the Indra Sawhney case (also known as the Mandal Case) upholding reservation for OBCs is binding on all concerned, including the petitioners, the government as well as a two-member Bench of this honourable court.

Referring to the March 29 interim order of the two-judge Bench, the petition said that according to one view in certain constituents of the Union Government the judgment may not be construed as a an order of stay but only an advice to the government.

The alternative interpretation is that it is an order of stay of operation of Section 6 of the Central Educational Institutions (Reservation in Admissions) Act. It is respectively submitted that it would be in the interests of justice if the court were to clarify and confirm that the order date March 29 is not an order directing stay of the implementation of the Act and is in the nature of advice to the Central Government as to the course of action that may appropriately be undertaken, the Central Governments application said.