The Supreme Court on Tuesday decided to hear on July 31 the Centre's application seeking vacation of the stay on the implementation of 27 per cent quota for OBCs in elite educational institutions.

A Bench headed by Chief Justice K G Balakrishnan also posted for next week the hearing for giving its direction on the issue of referring the matter of quota to a Constitution bench.

The Centre had on Monday moved an application seeking vacation of the March 29 interim order staying the provision of Central Educational Institutions (Reservation in Admission) Act 2006 providing 27 per cent reservation for OBCs.

The anti-quota petitioners opposed the application saying that the Centre had on earlier occasion taken the similar plea for lifting the stay, but was rejected by the court.

The Centre in its application said that it was seeking vacation of the March 29 order 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 said 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 the OBCs would not be able to get admission and would lose precious one year.