A seven judge bench of the Supreme Court on Thursday reserved it’s verdict on a bunch of petitions seeking overruling of the court’s 2004 judgement, which seeks to prevent the sub-classification of communities categorised as Scheduled Castes, aimed to provide a larger pie of quota benefits to the weakest groups among Dalits.
“It is a battle of backwardness within the backward communities”, said CJI DY Chandrachud, who led the bench with Justice BR Gavai, lone Dalit Judge on the bench along with Justices Vikram Nath, Bela M Trivedi, Pankaj Mithal, Manoj Misra and Satish Chandra Mishra.
States have argued that despite reservation, some castes are significantly underrepresented in comparison with the so-called dominant scheduled castes.
They want to create a separate quota for such castes within the SC Quota of 15% to ensure that the benefits are adequately distributed.
In 2004, a five judge bench with EV Chinnaiah case held SC communities to be a homogeneous group which could not be sub-classified and struck down an Andhra Pradesh law of 2000 which provided for sub-categorisation.
Later, a 2006 Punjab law on the same lines was struck down by HC citing Chinnaiah judgement. In response to this, the bench signalled that it would only determine whether the ruling in Chinnaiah case was correct or not. It further, clarified that the court will not go into the validity of state-enacted laws sub-classifying communities for graded distribution of the 15% quota for Dalits.
It said the High courts of such states concerned would determine the validity of these laws passed by them after examining the quantifiable data about backwardness of a community available with the legislature to allot a certain percentage of quota to those being the most backward.
Senior advocates Manoj Swarup, K S Chauhan, Sanjay Hegde among other, who certainly opposed the sub-classification, argued that the common thread for inclusion of communities in SC list was their social discrimination and denial of basic rights.
CJI said, “That is true but what else is common between the groups, Is the discrimination faced by them similar? There are many important indicators such as access to education and govt jobs, marriageable age, infant mortality, maternity mortality rates, Do all groups suffer identically on these aspects?”
Justice Gavai said, “If a particular community corners 75% of seats reserved for SCs, leaving a miniscule number of posts for other Dalit communities, should the state be barred from sub-classifying quota a more equitable distribution to achieve socially equitable mandated under Article 15 and 16 of the Constitution?”
In 1985, Justice Gavai, while serving as a lawyer for a candidate from the Mehtar (sweeper) community, fought a legal battle to secure an MBBS seat unfairly denied to the candidate. He noted that over 35 years after India became a republic, not a single person from that community had become a doctor.
CJI mentioned in 1992 Indira Sawhney judgement, which granted 27% reservation to OBCs and adopted the principle of sub-classification. This principle remained unaltered by subsequent constitutional amendments.
During a three-day hearing, the application of the ‘creamy layer’ principle to prevent the most advanced among the backward from monopolizing quota benefits was briefly discussed by Justice Gavai. He emphasized the necessity of some form of filtration in this regard.
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