The supreme court on Tuesday relaxed its 17-year-long rigid stance on the 50 per cent cap on reservations, said a report in the Asian Age. Passing two major orders, the apex permitted states to revisit their reservation policy to “exceed” the quota limit provided they had solid scientific data to justify the increase.

The limit of reservation in government jobs and educational institutions had been fixed in the SC's Mandal Commission case ruling of 1993. Since then, there have been increasing demands from state governments for a review of the limit. There was also a demand from some states to extend it to minorities. The court paved the way for a review of the reservation policy in two separate orders on petitions against Tamil Nadu and Karnataka laws passed in 1993 and 1994, which fixed the quota limit at 69 and 73 per cent respectively.

A three-member bench of Chief Justice S.H. Kapadia and Justices K.S. Radhakrishnan and Swatanter Kumar held that these states could “revisit” their enactments to “exceed” reservations beyond the 50 per cent limit if they had collected “quantified” data to support the increase.

The difference in the laws of the two states was that Tamil Nadu had protected its enactment from judicial review by placing it in the Constitution’s Ninth Schedule, while the Karnataka law was stayed by the Supreme Court in 1994 itself in the absence of such protection. Orissa is the third state to pass such a law, fixing the quota at 65 per cent, but its legislation was also stayed by the court. Orissa’s case was not before the court on Tuesday.

Under Tuesday’s orders, the Supreme Court’s interim directions will continue for one year to enable the governments of the two states to collect data to justify the increase in reservations. This means Karnataka will continue with 50 per cent quota and Tamil Nadu with 69 per cent.

The two laws had been challengedby petitions claiming that the 69 and 73 reservation quotas were fixed by them without any “quantified data” on their backward class population.