Madras HC warns of staying Govt Order on Vanniyar quota

The Madras High Court on Wednesday came out strongly against the Tamil Nadu government issuing a Government Order on the 10.5 per cent reservation for Vanniyar communities under the Most Backward Caste quota and said that it would have no other option but to stay it as the Government Order was issued in urgency.

The first bench of the Madras High court comprising of Chief Justice Sanjib Banerjee and Justice Senthilkumar Ramamoorthy while hearing a petition against the G.O., said that the court will hear a batch of petitions  that had come up before the bench challenging the validity of the Order.

The bench said, "We will hear the batch of petitions challenging the validity of the reservation in 10 days. But if the government wants to implement the quota even before the court decides its validity, then we have to stay any such move."

The AIADMK government, before the 2021 assembly elections, had passed a legislation providing 10.5 per cent reservation for the Vanniyar community in admissions as well as employment under the Most Backward Caste (MBC) quota.

A series of Public Interest Litigations (PIL) were filed by several affected communities who are in the MBC category, in the Madras High court challenging the validity of 10.5 per cent reservation for Vanniyars.

These communities that fall under MBC contended in their appeals before the Madras High court that if such a reservation to Vanniyars are implemented, then that community would enjoy reservation to higher education  institutes and government services while other 25 castes under the MBC and 68 castes under Deprived Communities (DC) would have to share the remaining reservation.

The court has directed the state government to immediately get instructions from the authorities regarding the Government Order.

The DMK government under Stalin in order to woo the Vanniyar community and thereby its political arm, the Pattali Makkal Katchi (PMK), brought the Government order.