No reservation in qualifying examinations!

New Delhi, May 14: Reservations in education is one of the most important right as well as a hot topic for Indians. But about the qualification and reservation, the Supreme Court’s latest judgment gave importance to merit in educations.

“For qualifying examinations, there cannot be any reservation”, the Supreme Court clarified on Monday on hearing a plea seeking 10% quota for the EWS in Central Teacher Eligibility Test (CTET)- 2019.

Justice Indira Banerjee and Sanjiv Khanna of vacation Bench stated reservation of any class comes into play only during admissions.

Further, explaining about this, the bench said, “For qualifying examinations there cannot be any reservations. This is wholly misconceived. This (CTET) is merely a qualifying examination. The issue of the reservation will come up only at the time of admission”.

When the counsel appearing for petitioner Rajneesh Kumar Pandey and others referred to the notification for CTET examination which is to be held on July 7, the bench reported, "The notification for the examination does not give any reservation to Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe either."

The petitioners, who claimed to be belonging to the economically weaker section of society, are candidates aspiring to appear in CTET-2019.

The bench dismissed the plea making the observation, later agreed to hear again on May 16, when lawyer appearing for the petitioner counseled the court to consider the matter.

The petitioners in their plea challenged the notification issued by the CBSE on the ground of violation of the rights guaranteed under the Constitution.

It said, “Recently the CBSE has published advertisement dated January 23, 2019 for conducting Central Teacher Eligibility Test (CTET), 2019 in which this benefit has not been given to the economically weaker section of the society and therefore the present writ petition is being filed to make sure that people covered under economically weaker section of the society are given similar benefit like other reserved category (SC, ST, and OBC) starting with CTET-2019 advertisement”.

The Constitution (103 amendments) Act, 2019 was passed by Parliament and came into force on January 16.

Under the amended Act, the Centre has provided for a 10% reservation to the citizens from general category belonging to the economically weaker section of the society, in addition to the already existing reservation policy for the benefit of other reserved categories.