Lucknow, Aug 7 - The Lucknow bench of the Allahabad High Court Friday stayed the Uttar Pradesh government's order introducing 50 percent reservation in private engineering colleges of the state.

A division bench comprising Justice Pradeep Kant and Justice Ritu Raj Awasthi passed the order on a public interest litigation moved by advocate V.K.S. Parmar.

The bench was of the view that the state government's order was blatant violation of a clear cut direction of the Supreme Court which July 17 held that the government's new reservation policy for private engineering colleges could be implemented only in those institutions which had formally entered into an agreement with the state to do so.