The Centre on Monday moved an application before the Supreme Court seeking to vacate its order staying the implementation of 27 per cent quota for OBCs in elite educational institutions.

The application was mentioned before a bench headed by Chief Justice K G Balakrishnan, which decided to hear it on Tuesday.

The Centre has sought vacating the March 29 order.

The Centre said it was approaching with the application for vacation of the interim order of March 29 as certain facts and circumstances were discovered subsequently.

It maintained that the Central Educational Institutions (Reservation in Admission) Act 2006 protected the number of seats available to the general category in the previous academic year while increasing seats for socially and educationally backward classes and proportionately for the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes and therefore was not detrimental to the interest of any section of the population.

The Centre added that consequent to the enactment of the act, many of the Central institutions initiated the process of increasing the number of seats and admission to the seats reserved for OBCs.

However, the process was held back due to the stay granted by the court, the application said adding, that many institutions were also making selections against reserved seats but had to stop in view of the court order.

It submitted that in case the stay continues to be operative, a large number of candidates selected against the seats reserved for OBCs, would not be available to get admission and would lose a precious one year.