This case, decided by the Supreme Court on 26th September 2018, is one of the most important judgments on reservation in promotions for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes. It was heard by a five-judge Constitution Bench headed by then CJI Dipak Misra, and it basically revisited an earlier judgment M. Nagaraj v. Union of India (2006) to see whether it needed to be reconsidered.

Background

To understand why this case came up at all, you have to go back a bit further. The debate over reservation in promotions started with General Manager, Southern Railway v. Rangachari (1961), where the Court said that giving adequate representation to backward classes in government jobs was important for their progress, so reservation in promotions was allowed under Article 16(4). But this changed in the famous Indra Sawhney case (1992), where a nine-judge bench held that reservation could not be extended to promotions because it would go against the right to equality. To undo the effect of this ruling, Parliament brought in the 77th Constitutional Amendment and added Article 16(4A), which gave the State the power to provide reservation in promotions specifically for SCs and STs. Naturally, this amendment was challenged, and that challenge reached the Court in M. Nagaraj v. Union of India (2006). The Court upheld Article 16(4A) as valid, but said the State could only use it if it first showed three things that the class was backward, that it was inadequately represented, and that giving reservation wouldn’t hurt administrative efficiency.

Issues Before the Court

This is where Jarnail Singh comes in. Several State Governments and the Central Government approached the Court, saying these Nagaraj conditions especially having to prove “backwardness” were creating practical problems and didn’t really make sense, since SCs and STs are already recognized as backward by their inclusion in the Presidential Lists under Articles 341 and 342. So the Court had to decide three things: should Nagaraj be sent to a larger seven-judge bench for review; does the State really need to collect data proving SC/ST backwardness before giving promotion reservation; and should the “creamy layer” concept, already used for OBCs, also apply to SCs and STs.

What the Court Held

The Court’s answer was fairly balanced. It refused to send Nagaraj to a larger bench, saying its reasoning was basically fine. But it struck down the requirement of collecting quantifiable data on backwardness it said this went against what the nine-judge bench had already decided in Indra Sawhney, and that being on the Presidential Lists is itself proof enough of backwardness, nothing more is needed. On the creamy layer question though, the Court actually changed its earlier stance from Ashok Kumar Thakur v. Union of India (2008) and held that the creamy layer principle should now apply to SC/ST promotions as well. The idea was that this doesn’t disturb the Presidential Lists in any way, but it stops the more well-off members of these communities from taking up all the reservation benefits while the actually disadvantaged ones are left out.

Conclusion

So overall, the judgment kept the reservation system in place for SCs and STs but removed a difficult condition, while also adding a safeguard so the benefit reaches the people who need it most.

This article has been researched and prepared by Pritanjali Maurya, Legal Research Intern at LegalRath.

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