Mumbai: The Bombay high court on Thursday said that the government of Maharashtra was at liberty to send data pertaining to the educational and financial condition of the Maratha community in the state to the newly-appointed Maharashtra State Commission for Backward Classes to decide if the community was entitled for reservation or not.
However, the court also clarified that it would continue to hear PILs filed in favour of and against Maratha reservation.
A division bench headed by chief justice Manjula Chellur, also partly accepted the state’s application and allowed the government to extend temporary contract of employees for another six months. The state had recently applied for permission to fill and renew 16 per cent posts on a temporary basis. The state had said that since petitions pertaining to Maratha reservation were pending before the court, and contracts of the 16 per cent posts filled from the open category on a temporary basis had either ended or were coming to an end, the government should again allow filling these posts on a temporary basis.
The court on Thursday dealt with the government’s application, seeking permission to send data of the Maratha community to the commission. The state had contended that the commission was formed in January this year and earlier, there was no such commission. The commission could consider and revise various lists and decide if any community needed reservation.
For this purpose, the commission needed assistance in the form of data collected by the government and the government did not have any objection to providing such data to the commission.
