The country’s top court has closed the doors on a challenge to National Law University, Jodhpur’s 25% reservation for Rajasthan students, firmly upholding a policy that has been hotly contested since its introduction in 2022.
A Bench of Justices PS Narasimha and AS Chandurkar made it clear that they would not interfere with the Rajasthan High Court’s earlier ruling, which had already blessed the policy. “We are not inclined to interfere,” the order stated, dismissing the plea filed under Article 136.
The petition came from 19-year-old NLU aspirant Anindita Biswas of West Bengal, who argued that the move tilted the scales unfairly. She pointed out that the NLU Jodhpur Act of 1999 had provided for reservations only for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes, not for domicile quotas. According to her, both the State’s notification and the University’s resolution were beyond the law’s scope.
Her case leaned on multiple points: that Rajasthan students were already well-represented across NLUs, that the policy diluted the pan-India spirit of the Common Law Admission Test (CLAT), and that a committee had previously recommended building new universities rather than reshaping NLU Jodhpur’s admissions. She also accused the State of overstepping, noting that the Academic Council—the body empowered under the Act—had not formally endorsed the policy shift.
Despite these arguments, the Supreme Court held its ground, siding with the High Court’s finding that the quota did not breach Articles 14 or 15 of the Constitution and remained within the policy-making powers of the State.
For NLU Jodhpur, the judgment cements a policy designed to reserve a quarter of its seats for local aspirants. For challengers, it marks the end of the legal road.
