HC halts fresh recruitment under Karnataka's enhanced SC/ST quota law
Bengaluru (PTI): In a setback to the state government, the Karnataka High Court has barred it from issuing any fresh recruitment notifications in an Act which had raised quotas for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes.
The restriction on recruitment under the Karnataka Scheduled Castes (SCs) and Scheduled Tribes (STs) (Reservation of Seats in Education Institutions and Appointments of Posts and Services under the State) Act, 2022, will remain until further orders.
However, the HC bench allowed the government to continue recruitment processes already notified before November 19, 2025, even if they follow the increased reservation percentages.
The court also clarified that all appointments made through these ongoing recruitments will be subject to the final outcome of the petitions challenging the law.
The division bench of Chief Justice Vibhu Bakhru and Justice C M Poonacha issued the interim order on November 27 while hearing two PILs filed by Mahendra Kumar Mitra of Raichur and Mahesh of Bengaluru.
The petitions question the constitutional validity of the 2022 Act, particularly the hike in SC/ST reservation, from 15 per cent to 17 per cent for SCs and from 3 per cent to 7 per cent for STs.
Other Backward Classes (OBCs) reservation continues to remain at 32 per cent, which takes over all reservations in the state to 56 per cent.
The Bench directed that all appointment or promotion orders issued under the Act must explicitly state that they are provisional and contingent on the court's final judgment, preventing candidates from claiming equity if the enhanced quotas are struck down.
The court further stated that this interim permission to continue ongoing recruitments will not override any specific interim or final orders already passed by courts or tribunals in related matters.
The government had earlier argued that halting ongoing recruitments would disrupt administrative functioning due to manpower shortages.
The petitions also contend that the increased reservation breaches the 50 per cent ceiling set by the Supreme Court in the Indra Sawhney judgment and that the State failed to consult the National Commissions for SCs and STs as mandated under Articles 338(9) and 338A(9) of the Constitution.
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Ambani, Adani pledge USD 210 bn for India's AI push
New Delhi (PTI): Conglomerates run by billionaires Mukesh Ambani and Gautam Adani committed USD 210 billion investment to creating infrastructure that will help India emerge as an AI development hub.
At the India AI Impact Summit, Ambani announced a Rs 10 lakh crore (about USD 110 billion) investment in artificial intelligence over the next seven years in gigawatt-scale AI-ready data centres in Jamnagar, leveraging up to 10 GW of green power surplus, and a nationwide edge-compute layer integrated with telecom and digital operator Jio's networks to deliver low-latency AI across India.
"Our resolve is clear: make intelligence as ubiquitous as connectivity," he said. "When compute becomes infrastructure, innovation will become inevitable."
Adani, on the other hand, unveiled a USD 100-billion investment to develop renewable-energy-powered, hyperscale AI-ready data centres by 2035 -- one of the world's largest integrated energy-compute commitments.
The initiative is expected to catalyse an additional USD 150 billion across server manufacturing, cloud platforms, and supporting industries, creating a projected USD 250 billion AI infrastructure ecosystem in India.
India must architect its own artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure rather than rely on imports, Adani Group executive director Jeet Adani said on Thursday, warning that AI will redefine national sovereignty.
Other major investments announced at the Summit included USD 50 billion commitment by Microsoft by the end of the decade to expand artificial intelligence access across the Global South. "India, not surprisingly, is one of the largest," its vice chair and president, Brad Smith, said.
The firm had unveiled USD 17.5 billion investment in AI investments in India last year.
Google CEO Sundar Pichai announced a new subsea cable initiative to boost AI connectivity between India, the US and other locations, alongside partnerships for cloud infrastructure platform support to over 20 million public servants across 800 districts.
Yotta Data Services, backed by a real estate group headed by Niranjan Hiranandani, announced over USD 2 billion spend on Nvidia's latest chips in an artificial intelligence computing hub it is setting up just outside the national capital.
While Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) signed up ChatGPT parent OpenAI as its first customer for its data centre unit under the global AI infrastructure initiative Stargate, infrastructure major Larsen & Toubro announced a proposed venture with Nvidia to build AI-ready data centre infrastructure, advanced computing platforms, and ecosystem enablement required to support large-scale AI workloads.
