NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court on Thursday reserved its order on a question whether a state government is empowered to make a sub-classification in Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes for grant of reservation in admissions and public jobs.
A seven-judge constitution bench of the apex court, headed by the Chief Justice of India (CJI) DY Chandrachud, was hearing the case.
The bench heard a detailed submission and argument from the Attorney General (AG) R Venkataramani, Solicitor General (SG) Tushar Mehta, senior advocate Kapil Sibal and various states, seeking review of the 2004, E V Chinnaiah , in the case. The Chinnaiah verdict had ruled that all the SC communities which suffered discrimination and humiliation for centuries represented a homogeneous class, incapable of being sub-categorised.
Six other judges in the bench, besides the CJI, were: Justices BR Gavai, Vikram Nath, Bela M Trivedi, Pankaj Mithal, Manoj Misra and Satish Chandra Mishra.
“While conferring benefits on the most backward, you cannot exclude others. This will become a dangerous trend of appeasement. Some state governments will pick out a few castes while others will pick another set of castes. The idea is not for popular politics to play out in this. We will have to tailor it by laying down the criteria,” the bench observed, during the hearing of the case, which went on for 4 days.
The top court had heard around 23 petitions seeking review of the E V Chinnaiah judgement, in the case. The Chinnaiah judgement had said that any sub-classification’ of the SC would violate Article 14 (right to equality) of the Constitution. The same verdict had said that only Parliament, and not state legislatures, can exclude castes deemed to be SC from the Presidential List under Article 341 of the Constitution.
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