Bombay High Court stays SC, ST, OBC reservations in minority institutions for class 11 admissions
The Bombay High Court on Thursday (June 12, 2025) stayed the reservation for Scheduled Castes (SC), Scheduled Tribes (ST) and Other Backward Classes (OBCs) for the admission of first year of junior college (FYJC) at the minority institutions in Maharashtra. This interim stay is on the Maharashtra government's mandate to minority educational institutions to reserve seats for ST, SC or OBC in the FYJC admissions.
Passing the order, a Division Bench of Justices, M.S. Karnik and N.R. Borkar observed, 'Prima facie, we find substance in the submissions advanced by the petitioners for the grant of interim relief. Accordingly, insofar as admission to class 11 is concerned, the mandate of social reservation shall not be made applicable to any seats in minority educational institutions.'
The court passed the order on a bunch of petitions moved by Maharashtra Association of Minority Educational Institutions, along with prominent colleges from Solapur and Mumbai such as, Jai Hind, KC College, St. Xavier's, Walchand College of Arts and Science and Hirachand Nemchand College of Commerce, who challenged Maharashtra government's May 6, 2025, government resolution (GR) and called it 'arbitrary' and 'lacking legal authority'.
Clause 11 of the GR issued by the School Education Department, permits vacant seats under the minority quota to be filled through centralised admission process, subject to applicable social and parallel reservations once intra-minority adjustments are exhausted. It says, 'If admissions are lower than the intake capacity in minority quota, admissions can be given as per interchanging between linguistic and religious minority groups. Even after that, if seats remain vacant, those surrendered vacant seats will be filled based on the centralised admission process where all social and parallel reservations are applicable.'
Representing the petitioners, senior advocate, Milind Sathe argued that the Article 15(5) of the Constitution excludes minority educational institutes, aided or unaided, from applicability of reservations for socially and educationally backward classes. He further contended that under Article 30(1) (right of minorities to establish and administer educational institutions), the right of admission is exclusively with the management of the institution. Even unfilled minority seats should revert to open category admissions and not be subjected to reservation quotas, he said.
The court noted that an earlier High Court ruling had quashed a circular issued by Mumbai University for a similar reservation in minority educational institutions and for that the court had asked the State government to issue a corrigendum for issuing the GR.
Government Pleader Neha Bhide submitted that she did not have any instructions from the government to withdraw the resolution or issue a corrigendum. 'The right of the minority community is not being touched by the GR. The minority community can fill up all the seats that they have. It is only at the stage when the seats remain unfilled, and the seats are surrendered that the social reservation comes into place. The reservation would be only for the surrendered seats and this is not a case which violates constitutional mandate.'
The Bench noted that it found merit in the arguments presented by the educational institutes and based on that, it decided to grant an interim stay on the clause of the May 6 GR. It further directed the State government to file its affidavit as response to the petitions withing four weeks and kept the matter for further hearing on August 6.
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