Quota numbers
“The court of the Chief Justice of India virtually turned into a mathematics classroom earlier this week. This happened when a Constitution Bench was hearing a petition on the OBC quota in higher educational institutions. All the five judges, lawyers and others present in the packed court were seen doing their back-of-the-envelop calculations to arrive at the number of seats that are supposed to go to students belonging to the SC/ST, OBC and the general category.
The judges were exchanging their calculations. Senior advocate K.K. Venugopal, counsel for the petitioner, had a tough time explaining the percentages to the judges, particularly Justices R.V. Raveendran and Arijit Pasayat. Apparently, there was an effort to find a way out for the provision of 27 per cent reservation for the OBC without affecting the already available percentages for the SC/ST (22.5) and the general category (77.5). In this case, the total percentage would come to 127, while anything above 100 per cent is a mathematical improbability.”
