Morning Pulse: High Court strikes down Karnataka's SC/ST quota hike as politics moves into courtrooms

Karnataka spent Monday arguing in the streets about voter rolls. It wakes up on Tuesday to two rulings from court offices. Late on Monday the Karnataka High Court struck down the law that had pushed reservations for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes beyond the 50 per cent mark. In Delhi, the Supreme Court registry sent back the INDIA bloc's petition on the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of rolls with a list of defects. Both rulings land on Chief Minister D K Shivakumar's desk, and neither can be answered with a protest.

The quota ruling is the bigger story for the state. A division bench led by Chief Justice Vibhu Bakhru quashed the Karnataka Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Reservation) Act, 2022, on a public interest petition, Siasat, NewsKarnataka and IANS reported. The law had raised the SC quota from 15 to 17 per cent and the ST quota from 3 to 7 per cent in education and state jobs, taking total reservation in the state from 50 to 56 per cent. The increase followed the Justice Nagamohan Das committee's recommendations and was brought in by the Basavaraj Bommai-led BJP government.

Much is still unclear. None of the reports we read set out the court's full reasoning beyond the 50 per cent ceiling. None said what happens to admissions, recruitment notices or appointments already made under the higher quotas. NewsKarnataka noted that this will depend on the operative part of the judgment. By the time of writing, we found no response from the Shivakumar government or its ministers in any report.

The opposition did respond. Bommai, now an MP, said in a statement that the state government must take the matter to the Supreme Court by filing a writ petition. He pointed to Tamil Nadu and Chhattisgarh, where reservations exceed 50 per cent. He warned that his side would go to the apex court itself if the government did not, Deccan Herald and IANS reported. That puts the Congress government in an awkward spot. It has to decide whether to defend in Delhi a law passed by its rivals.

Now the loop we flagged last night on the SIR petition. The Supreme Court will not list it yet. According to IANS and India TV, the registry flagged 14 defects. They include missing vakalatnamas for nine petitioners, an illegible copy of Mallikarjun Kharge's identity card, no explanation for naming individuals as respondents, and a court-fee shortfall of Rs 220. The defects must be fixed before a hearing can be fixed, and India TV reported the case was not expected to be mentioned on Tuesday. None of this is a ruling on the merits. It does slow a campaign that had promised urgency.

The row over the Chief Justice has gone quiet. We found no reply yet from the BJP, the court or the Congress high command to KPCC chief B K Hariprasad's remark that the CJI should not behave like a BJP member. Bommai, in the same statement, called the march to the Supreme Court illegal and argued that cases on the CEC and SIR were already before the court, IANS reported.

On the sting row, nothing new came from the government overnight. Shivakumar has still not named the person Kumaraswamy says he met at a Bengaluru hotel, and no SIT has been ordered. An editorial in Deccan Herald on Monday night asked for an independent, court-monitored inquiry, arguing that allegations with no formal probe behind them are only political theatre. None of the sting claims has been verified.

The other loops are still open. The BJP state unit has given no dates for its agitation. On Saturday, B Y Vijayendra said the core committee would lay siege to police stations if FIRs against its workers over SIR Form-7 applications continued, PTI and The Bengaluru Live reported. We found no fresh reports overnight on the Shivamogga black-flag protest against V Somanna. We also found no Karnataka government reply to the TTD and Jana Sena objections over the Tirumala Pravasi Soudha.