A Vacation Bench of Justice Vikas Mahajan asked the university as well as the Centre to file their response to the petition within three weeks.
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The Delhi High Court has asked Jamia Millia Islamia (JMI) to respond to a plea challenging its decision to approve religion-based reservation in appointing teaching and non-teaching staff while abolishing the quota for the Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe categories.
A Vacation Bench of Justice Vikas Mahajan asked the university as well as the Centre to file their response to the petition within three weeks.
The court clarified that it was not staying the ongoing recruitment process. “In the meanwhile, the university is directed to keep one post vacant for the petitioners in each category — Assistant Registrar, Section Officer and lower division clerk — under which they have applied,” the court said in an order passed last week.
The petitioners, Ram Niwas Singh and Sanjay Kumar Meena, who belong to the SC and the ST community, respectively, moved the High Court after JMI advertised 241 non-teaching posts. The petitioners contended that the university had not reserved seats for applicants under the SC and ST categories as mandated by the Constitution as well as the JMI Act, which states that the university shall be open for applicants from all classes, castes and creeds.
The petition also sought directions to quash a resolution dated June 23 2014, adopted by the university’s Executive Council approving only religion-based reservation, for having been passed without due process.
The university had earlier defended the existing framework arguing that as a minority institution, it was not bound by the reservation policy for SC/ST communities.
The court will hear the case again on July 7.