The big decision of the Supreme Court in the matter of reserves, now the state governments will decide the quota

New delhi date. 27 August 2020, Thursday

The Supreme Court on Thursday passed a landmark judgment saying that states could also create categories in the SC / ST community for reservation. The court has taken this decision so that some castes belonging to SC / ST may be given more preference for reservation than the rest of the castes. In early 2004, E.V. Chinnaiya Vs. In the Andhra Pradesh state case, a constitutional bench of the apex court had ruled that no other quota was allowed in the quota received by any class, the court has taken up the matter for further consideration. The court has referred the matter to a bench of 7 judges.

The Supreme Court has asked the Constitution Bench to reconsider the creamy layer within the SC / ST. The court in its order empowered the states to grant quota benefits to such groups which could not avail the benefit of the reserve. Justice Arun Mishra said, "If the state has the power to grant reserves, it can extend its benefits to those sub-castes who were previously unable to avail them."

A bench comprising Indira Banerjee, Vineet Saran, MR Shah and Anirudh Bose said the 2004 judgment did not make the right decision and states could legislate for subclass castes in SC / ST.

Will be sent before a bench of 7 judges

The opinion of the 5 judges is that the 2004 decision needs to be reconsidered. In both cases the number of judges of the Constitution Bench who give judgment today and E.V. There are 5 in the Chennai case. So today the Constitutional Bench has given its opinion that it is necessary to reconsider the system given in the old decision. Therefore, it has been said that the matter will be referred to a larger bench i.e. a bench of 7 judges.

The appeal was filed following a decision of the Punjab and Haryana High Court. In this decision, Section 4 (5) of the Punjab Scheduled Castes and Backward Classes (Reservation in Services) Act, 2006 was repealed. Under this, 50 per cent of the vacancies reserved for Scheduled Castes in direct recruitment were to be given to Valmiki and religious Sikhs as first choice. The Punjab and Haryana High Court dismissed the provision as unconstitutional. Chinnaiya Vs. State of Andhra Pradesh (2005) relied on 1 SCC 394.

All races belong to the class of homogeneous groups

It states that under Article 341 (1) of the Presidential Decree, all castes belong to the class of homogeneous groups, and they cannot be further divided. After this, it was also stated that any such law with reference to entry 41 of Schedule II or Schedule 25 of Schedule III of the Constitution would violate Article 14 of the Constitution.