Mumbai: The Bombay High Court on Thursday stayed a Maharashtra government decision that sought to apply Scheduled Caste (SC), Scheduled Tribe (ST), and Other Backward Class (OBC) reservations to First Year Junior College (FYJC) admissions in minority colleges. The interim stay was granted after the government refused to withdraw its decision to apply the reservation in minority institutions.
A division bench of Justices MS Karnik and NR Borkar granted the stay noting that there was merit in the arguments raised by the petitioners, who had challenged the government resolution (GR) issued on May 6, 2025, and subsequent corrective GRs that followed.
“Accordingly, as far as admission to Class 11 is concerned, the mandate of social reservation shall not be made applicable to any minority educational institutions,” the bench held, directing the state government to ensure the FYJC online admission portal reflects this position.
The court was hearing a clutch of petitions filed by the Maharashtra Association of Minority Educational Institutions, two colleges from Solapur, and prominent South Mumbai institutions such as Jai Hind, KC, HR, and St Xavier’s.
The court has directed the government to file its reply within four weeks, while allowing the petitioners two additional weeks to respond. The matter will now be heard on August 6.
On Wednesday, the bench had urged the state to consider withdrawing the controversial clause in the GR and reminded the government that a similar attempt had been withdrawn in 2019. However, when the matter was heard on Thursday, Government Pleader Neha Bhide told the court she had “no instructions to withdraw the GR.”
Bhide defended the resolution, stating it did not infringe upon the rights of minority institutions. “The right of the minority community is not being touched by the GR. The minority community can fill up all the seats that they have. It is only at the stage when the seats remain unfilled and the seats are surrendered that the social reservation comes into place,” she argued, adding that such an arrangement did not violate any constitutional mandate.
Petitioners, however, contended that the government’s action was unconstitutional. Senior advocate Milind Sathe and advocate S C Naidu, representing the petitioners, argued that the decision was “arbitrary” and “imposed without any authority of law,” and that it had been made without any prior consultation.
They cited Article 15(5) of the Constitution, which excludes minority institutions from the ambit of social reservations, and Article 30(1), which guarantees minorities the right to establish and administer educational institutions of their choice.
Until the last academic year, the standard admission formula in minority colleges allotted 50% of seats for the respective minority community, 5% for management quota, and the remaining 45% for open admissions, without applying any reservation criteria. The May 6 resolution and the corrections issued on June 2 and June 10, however, suggested that SC/ST/OBC reservations would apply to these 45% open seats, triggering confusion and opposition.
Clause 11 of the May 6 resolution stated that if seats remained vacant under the minority quota even after allowing interchanges between linguistic and religious groups, those surrendered seats would be subject to centralised admission with all social and parallel reservations.
The petitioners said this clause had been misinterpreted by government authorities to apply reservation across all open seats in minority institutions, contrary to past practice. They sought not only a stay but also a directive to immediately correct the online admission portal in line with constitutional provisions.
