The Supreme Court upheld 27% reservation for OBC candidates in the All India Quota seats for undergraduate and postgraduate NEET medical and dental admissions. Rejecting the petitioners' merit-versus-reservation framing, the Court held that reservation is not antithetical to merit but furthers distributive justice, and that an examination rank is not a proxy for merit.
The Supreme Court held that a candidate from a vertically reserved category (SC/ST/OBC) who scores above the general cut-off must be adjusted against the open seats on merit, not counted against the reserved quota. The rule holds even where the candidate also claims a horizontal reservation such as for women. The open category is open to all on merit.
On 10 April 2008, a five-judge Constitution Bench upheld the Central Educational Institutions (Reservation in Admission) Act 2006 — providing 27% OBC reservation in centrally-funded higher education institutions including the IITs, IIMs, AIIMS and central universities — together with the 93rd Constitutional Amendment that inserted Article 15(5). The Bench extended the Indra Sawhney creamy-layer doctrine to OBC reservation in higher education, preserved the 50% reservation ceiling and required periodic review and quantifiable data. The validity of Article 15(5) for private unaided institutions was left for Pramati (2014) to settle.