Approach respective HCs, SC tells petitioners challenging Ordinance on reservation in university teaching posts

The Supreme Court today declined to entertain a petition challenging an Ordinance that provides for reservation of teaching positions in central educational institutions for persons belonging to the Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes, and the socially and educationally backward classes..While the Division Bench of Justices SA Bobde and Sanjeev Khanna refused to entertain the petition, it allowed the petitioner to approach the High Courts..Appearing for the petitioner, Advocate Gopal Sankaranarayanan submitted that it is a Central Ordinance and that the matter was urgent. The Court, however, directed the petitioner to approach the respective High Courts. The petitioner, therefore, chose to withdraw the petition..A day after the Central Education Institutions (Reservation in Teachers’ Cadre) Ordinance, 2019 was promulgated, its validity was challenged in the Supreme Court..The Ordinance reverses the effect of the Supreme Court’s judgment that had upheld the ruling of the Allahabad High Court on the issue of reservation for the Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe candidates in teaching posts..The Allahabad High Court judgment had laid down that while granting reservation for teaching posts in higher education, the University shall not be treated as one unit for carving out reserved posts. Instead, every department shall be treated as a singular unit and reservations granted in each department were to be based on the number of posts..The old system was a 200-point roster system, wherein an institute was treated as a unit in itself. However, the High Court, while doing away with this system, held that it could lead to some departments getting all the reservations, while other departments would get only unreserved candidates..The Allahabad High Court thus brought in the department-wise roster and reservation system in April 2017. The Union Human Resource Development (HRD) Ministry later moved the Supreme Court against the Allahabad High Court’s judgment, but the appeal was dismissed leading to the ordinance.