By IANS,
New Delhi : The central government Tuesday said it would appeal in the Supreme Court against the Andhra Pradesh High Court order rejecting the state government’s proposal to create 4.5 percent sub-quota for notified minorities.
“We will file a special leave petition against the high court order in the Supreme Court,” Minority Affairs Minister Salman Khurshid told reporters here.
But Khurshid said it was not a “political setback”.
“We are in the process of discovering affirmative action and have relied upon previous apex court orders on the issue,” he said.
Khurshid said the Andhra Pradesh government tried to give sub-quota for the notified minorities twice earlier but the proposals were rejected by the high court. The matter, he said, was now pending before a constitutional bench of the apex court.
He said the high court objected to the sub-quota on the ground that it was based on religion and the government cannot give reservation to backward classes without prior approval of the Commission for Other Backward Classes (COBC).
This, he said, was being contested by the government as the OBC panel can only decide on inclusion or exclusion of a community and cannot take a call on the percentage of sub-quota.
The minister also said the reservation was not on the basis of religion, and that the government had decided on 4.5 percent sub-quota out of the 27 percent reservation for the OBCs based on the proportional share of the communities in the population of the state.
He said the sub-quota was based on the list of backward classes as recognised by the Mandal Commission.
The Andhra Pradesh High Court Monday quashed the 4.5 percent sub-quota for the minorities carved out of the 27 percent reservation for Other Backward Classes (OBC) in jobs.
A division bench of Chief Justice Madan B. Lokur and Justice P.V. Sanjay Kumar set aside the office memorandum (OM) issued last December by the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government to provide the sub-quota to minorities.