LLM student files petition to abolish reservation; withdraws plea after Supreme Court warns of costs

The Supreme Court on Tuesday refused to entertain a petition seeking abolition of reservation for lower castes..The petition filed by a law student, Shivani Panwar came up before a bench of Chief Justice of India DY Chandrachud and Justice PS Narasimha which proceeded to berate the petitioner, terming it a petition filed for publicity. "'Remove system of reservation' - this is a plea. You are saying it is against equality and it is leading to caste system. LLM student files a plea for publicity. We will impose a lakh cost if you do not withdraw. Petition is an abuse of the process of the law," the Court said..The petitioner's counsel then withdrew the petition. Interestingly, a Constitution bench of the Supreme Court had recently batted for doing away with reservation. In the judgment upholding the constitutional validity of the Constitution (103rd Amendment) Act which provided for reservation for Economically Weaker Sections (EWS), Justice JB Pardiwala said that reservation should not continue for an indefinite time..In the same verdict, Justice Dinesh Maheshwari had opined that provisions in Articles 15 and 16 enabling reservation for Scheduled Caste/ Scheduled Tribes (SC/ST) and Socially and Educationally Backward Classes (SEBC) do not form part of the basic structure of the Constitution.Justice Bela M Trivedi in her concurring judgment in that case said that it is time to revisit the reservation/ affirmative action system followed in India..Advocate Rameshwar Prasad Goyal appeared for the petitioner. [Read order]