THE FIVE-JUDGE Constitution Bench headed by Chief Justice K G Balakrishnan stated that the Constitutional Bench is not going to pass any interim order to lift the stay from the OBC quota. The Bench also said that it would hear the main petition filed by the government to examine whether the Central Educational Institutions (Reservation in Admission) Act 2006 is constitutionally valid or not.

The Solicitor General Mr G E Vahanvati submitted before the Constitution Bench that if the court wanted the exclusion of the ’creamy layer’ from the quota, the Centre would obey it. The Constitution Bench comprised of Justice Arijit Pasayat, C K Thakker, R V Raveendran and Dalveer Bhandari asked what the changed circumstance was.  What was new that the Solicitor General was arguing.

The Central Educational Institutions (Reservation in Admissions) Act 2006 cannot be implemented until the main petitions, challenging the very validity of the Act, is decided. Last week, a three-judge Divisional Bench headed by Chief Justice K G Balakrishnan stated that the matter of Centre’s application regarding the vacation of stay on OBC quota would be heard before the Constitution Bench. The Bench also said that the Constitution Bench would hear the Public Interest Litigations (PILs) questioning the constitutional validity of the Act that permits 27 per cent OBC quota in higher educational institutions.

The culprit behind the transformation of this coalition government into a laughing stock is the Human Resource Minister, Arjun Singh. Singh is a very harassed person these days. He has been named in a dowry harassment case; the ruling by the apex court must have left him very angry and disappointed with our judicial system. He hoped the reservation campaign would be an absolute masterstroke and it almost worked for him. He had suddenly snatched the copyright to "reservation" from another former king, V.P.Singh.

Arjun Singh is the old style Darbari Politician who remained in power courtesy the Indira Gandhi family. After losing repeatedly in several elections, he resigned himself to his fate and exploited the emotive issue of the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi to stay in the limelight. For years he would talk only about the assassination probe in order to be in the "Darbari loop" of 10, Janpath. His dedication bore fruit and he too got into the cabinet with the other family loyalists. But seemingly determined to outdo V.P.Singh, he revived the reservation issue.

His misadventure did not go well with his cabinet colleagues .However, the issue being sensitive, everybody pretended to support him. Even the opposition Bharatiya Janta Party (BJP) was left with no choice but to support the issue. The left parties patted him on his back and the tacit encouragement may have led him to believe that he had finally arrived, at last, on the political horizon of the nation. But the court rulings have soured his ambitions. Arjun Singh knows that the reservation issue will not help the Congress wrest the initiative from the likes of Mayawati and Lalu Prasad Yadav. Instead it would make Manmohan Singh and others who work hard for the country’s progress, very uncomfortable. And if circumstances permit, Arjun Singh would not mind pulling the rug from under their feet to ascend the throne. After all, he chose the very emotive issue to fulfill his lifelong ambition. 

The Congress on the other hand did not derive any benefit from this move of Arjun Singh. Rather, it scared away the intelligentsia which was gravitating to-wards it, thanks to the clean image of Dr Manmohan Singh. After the disintegration of BJP, the upper castes and the literate people were drawn towards the Congress but this regressive act, coupled with a liberal dose of appeasement policy led them to change their mind.

 If India is to be a developed nation by 2020 then the benefits of growth must percolate to the lowest strata of the society. The Planning Commission is working towards this and various systems are being weighed to make delivery systems at the grass-roots level absolutely leak proof. Captains of Industry too have woken up and are willing to contribute to "effective" affirmative action. The government is trying to dole out cash to the needy to eradicate poverty. A smart card, embedded with an advanced chip will be distributed to every citizen of India to accomplish this goal. That will, hopefully, keep out the middlemen.

But the irony of our nation is that even senior politicians are not able to think beyond personal welfare. They spend their life self-serving and now when the country is all set to move into the developed zone, they are again playing dirty politics. Yes, our poor brethren genuinely deserve help in this competitive age but they need something tangible by way of help - not dirty politicking!