In a jolt to the Centre, the Calcutta High Court on Wednesday stayed quota for Other Backward Classes in post- graduate courses in the Indian Institute of Management, Calcutta, and stopped the interview of OBC candidates for the same.

Justice Maharaj Sinha, in an ex-parte interim order, granted the stay on a petition by Sayan Guha, a B-Tech student challenging the Human Resource Ministry's memorandum and also the IIM-C interview scheduled for Thursday.

The interim order stayed the operation of the reservation clause of IIM prospectus and also the resolution of office memorandum dated April 20, 2008, passed by the HRD Ministry. The matter would come up for hearing again on June 9.

The IIM-C had scheduled the special interview of OBC students following the HRD memorandum. Guha's counsels Kishore Dutta and Nilava Bandopadhyay told the court that the office memo and the subsequent reservation clause were in violation of the April 10 Supreme Court order on reservation of OBCs, that had set a yardstick for such quotas and defined the creamy layer that would be out of the purview of reservation.

They said while the apex court had directed that graduates would not be considered for reservation, the HRD ministry had, in violation of that, passed an office memo to the effect that OBC students would get reservation in post-graduate courses. No counsel appeared for the HRD Ministry and the IIM-C.