Wholesale quotas frustrate purpose of reservation: Supreme Court asks Madhya Pradesh to review 75% domicile quota in B.Ed colleges

The Supreme Court on Friday reiterated that states should not indulge in wholesale reservation in educational institutes, as the same has been held to be unconstitutional and violative of the right to equality. [Veena Vadini Teachers Training Institute v. State of Madhya Pradesh and ors].A Bench of Justices Aniruddha Bose and Sudhanshu Dhulia made the observation while hearing petitions challenging the mandated 75 per cent domicile quota for B.Ed colleges in Madhya Pradesh, a figure it noted was 'too high' and did not serve any purpose."Though the State is within its right to reserve seats for its own residents, but while doing so, it must keep the ground realities in mind...reservation to the extent of 75% of the total seats makes it a wholesale reservation, which has been held in Pradeep Jain to be unconstitutional and violative of Article 14 of the Constitution of India...A wholesale reservation as we have seen is not serving any purpose rather it frustrates the very purpose of the reservation," the Court said.The top court thus requested the State government to examine relevant data to come to 'a realistic finding' as to the extent of such a quota, within two months..The Bench was hearing an appeal against a Madhya Pradesh High Court order that had upheld such a quota. The appellant ran a B.Ed college and said it was facing diffculty due to such a policy, with a bulk of the domicile quota seats remaining unfilled. It was pointed out that 75% of the seats which have been reserved for permanent residents of Madhya Pradesh remain vacant due to the non-availability of such candidates..The top court at the outset made it clear that domicile quota by itself has already been held as permissible and constitutionally valid. However, such quotas had been upheld by the top court based on the scenario decades ago, and in the context of medical education, it was stressed."We should not lose sight of this vital fact when we are dealing with the reservations based on residence in other fields of education, as we are doing presently. Whether the justifiable factors of ‘State interest’ and the claim for backwardness of the State or any other factors which were relevant factors for residence reservations in medical education, would be equally relevant in other fields of education or other professional courses is still to be determined.".There has been a change in medical education with the growth of private and public institutes, along with social and economic changes, the Bench went on to note."In any case, the conditions as it exists today is not the same, as was there 40 years earlier. This Court while upholding such reservations in medical education had considered factors such as huge investments the State had made in creating the infrastructure, the backwardness of the area, the presumption that the local residents after gaining the education will serve the people of that State, etc. All these factors may or may not be equally relevant while we are considering admission to other courses"..While it declined to interfere with admissions for the current academic year since the same were already under way, the Court asked that next year, seats be fixed keeping in mind its observations in the case..Advocates Puneet Jain, Christi Jain, Harsh Jain, Umang Mehta, Shruti Singh, Yogit Kamat, Mann Arora and Akriti Sharma represented the appellants.Deputy Advocate General Ankita Choudhary with Advocates Pashupathi Nath Razdan, Shreeyash U Lalit, Maitreyee Jagat Joshi, Ayushi Mittal, Astik Gupta, Kuldeep Kumar Shukla and Vipul Abhishek represented the Madhya Pradesh government..[Read judgment]