In a setback to the Manohar Lal Khattar-led BJP government in Haryana, the Punjab and Haryana high court on Thursday put on hold the state government’s recent notification prescribing 10 per cent job reservation for Jats and five other communities — Jat Sikhs, Rors, Bishnois, Tyagis and Muslim Jat — till the next hearing on July 21.
The high court passed this order while hearing a petition challenging the constitutional validity of the Haryana Backward Classes (Reservation in Services and Admission in Educational Institutions) Act of 2016 that was passed unanimously by the state Assembly on March 29.
The interim order, passed by a division bench headed by Justice S.S. Saron, came in response to public interest litigation filed by Bhiwani resident Murari Lal Gupta, who was seeking directions to quash block “C” of the Act, which provides reservation to the Jat community under a newly-carved-out Backward Classes (C) category. The petitioner submitted that reservation for the Jat community has been provided under the new Act on the basis of the Justice K.C. Gupta Commission report which the SC has already quashed.
The petition had initially come up for hearing before a single-judge high court bench of Justice Mahesh Grover. However, the bench observed that the issues raised by the petitioner were required to be decided by the PIL bench.
The petitioner’s counsel, Mukesh Verma, said providing reservation on the basis of the Justice Gupta Commission report would amount to revision of a judicial order, which could not be done by the legislature. He asserted that only the judiciary could revise the findings of an issue already decided in a judicial order.
He submitted that in 2014, too, the state government had introduced a bill to include Jats in the list of OBCs for quota in jobs and educational institutes, but the Supreme Court, in Ram Singh versus the Union of India, had held that Jats were not socially, educationally and politically backward.
