An extremely significant Supreme Court verdict of 18 August finally clarified that 10% relaxation for OBC admissions would be calculated from a ‘minimum eligibility or qualifying mark’ and not from the mark obtained by the last general category candidate to get admission. It thus put an end to the ploy used by universities all over India to keep OBC students from availing seats reserved for them.

This victory is a result of three years of struggle which the AISA began in JNU in 2008, but which then spread to other universities too, resulting in a verdict of national significance in defending OBC reservations.

How Universities like JNU, DU etc Robbed OBC students of their seats...

In the verdict, Justices Raveendran and Patnaik describe the process by which JNU and other institutions stole OBC seats:

“During those years (2008-09 and 2009-10), JNU would fix the minimum eligibility marks as say 40% when the admission programme is announced. JNU would apply it only to general category candidates. It would not say what was the minimum eligibility marks for OBC candidates, but would decide the same, only after all the general category seats were filled, by fixing a band of marks upto 10% below the marks secured by the last candidate admitted under the general category. If an OBC candidate secured the marks within that band, he would be given admission. Otherwise even if he had secured 70%, as against the minimum of 40% he would not get a seat, if the band of marks was higher. Such a procedure, was arbitrary and discriminatory, apart from being unknown in regard to admissions to educational institutions....

“...No candidate who fulfils the prescribed eligibility criteria and whose rank in the merit list is within the number of seats available for admission, can be turned down, by saying that he should have secured some higher marks based on the marks secured by some other category of students. …If the total number of seats in a course is 154 and the number of seats reserved for OBCs is 42, all the seats should be filled by OBC students in the order of merit from the merit list of OBC candidates possessing the minimum eligibility marks prescribed for admission. (subject to any requirement for entrance examination.) When an eligible OBC candidate is available, converting an OBC reservation seat to general category is not permissible.”

It is clear from the above that thanks to the distorted definition of ‘cut-off’ adopted by JNU and some other universities, even many OBC students who met the minimum eligibility criterion fixed for general category, minus any relaxation, were denied admission, turned away, and told they lacked ‘merit’! For three whole years, the JNU as well as even Government of India and eventually several other universities, clung to this absurd, grossly unfair position in the face of all reasonable argument.

The long struggle that led to this verdict

The Supreme Court’s verdict vindicates the position that AISA in JNU first argued way back in 2008, when JNU first announced its process of implementing OBC reservations. Since then AISA adopted many forms of struggle including a hunger strike, many demonstrations, and public meetings. Using the painstakingly collected RTI data on admissions, AISA identified and contacted students who had been wrongly denied admission. Two of these, backed by AISA, took their case to the Delhi HC.

In the entire period from 2008 till March 2010, SFI (student wing of the CPIM) never even once endorsed this core obstacle in the way of OBC reservation, boycotted all Public Meetings and consultative processes with faculty to evolve a strong consensus on the OBC cut-off issue. Instead they ran a vitriolic campaign against AISA, giving an opportunity to the JNU administration to maintain confusion on this issue.

Eventually, the stance argued and sustained by AISA since 2008 was vindicated by the Delhi High Court in a landmark verdict dated 7 September 2010. This verdict gave a boost to the teachers who were waging a struggle to defend OBC reservations in DU and forced JNU to adopt the correct cut-off criteria, resulting in most OBC seats being filled.

PV Indiresan then filed an SLP (special leave petition) challenging the HC verdict on OBC admission in JNU, in the Supreme Court.

Meanwhile, as the matter was being heard in the Supreme Court, the admission in-charge of the Hindi Department of Allahabad University (former JNUSU President Pranay Krishna) registered his protest against being asked to implement the faulty cut-off criterion for OBC admissions.

The 18 August verdict finally vanquished the anti-reservation forces even in the Supreme Court, dismissing Indiresan’s appeal and upholding the Delhi HC verdict.

Political Double Standards

The episode also exposed the double standards of the Congress-UPA Central government on the question of OBC reservations. In the course of the struggle, the HRD Ministry and Social Justice Ministry were repeatedly approached, asking them to step in and settle the matter by clarifying how their own law on OBC reservations was to be interpreted. Not only did the Central Government fail to do so; in fact during the JNU case in the Delhi HC, the Counsel for Central Government actually argued in support of the JNU Administration and YFE advocates, arguing against AISA’s (correct) interpretation of ‘cut-off marks.’ It was only after the Delhi HC verdict defined cut-off as ‘minimum eligibility mark’ that the Central Government changed its posture.

During the 3-year long struggle, the political parties whose USP is ‘social justice’ and ‘OBCs’ welfare’ maintained a strange silence on the deliberate and open subversion of OBC quotas. Parties like the RJD and SP were allies of the UPA, but they never used their power or influence to speak a single word – within Parliament or outside - to raise this matter affecting thousands of OBC students!

Throughout this protracted struggle, several progressive voices defending social justice (including a range of progressive lawyers who fought the case, and other concerned citizens including, notably, the late civil libertarian K Balagopal and retired IAS officer and social justice expert P S Krishnan) enthusiastically supported the cause.