New Delhi, August 1, 2024 The Hon’ble Supreme Court of India has declared in its recent verdict that states can now go for sub classification among the SCs and STs. In its wording, the ruling provides that states have to categorize the so-called ‘creamy layer’ of these groups signifying social and economic mobility in the society and bar them from the benefits of the reservation.
Notably, the seven-judge Constitution Bench, while delivering the judgment in Supreme Court on sub-classification the bench that was headed by Chief Justice of India D. Y. Chandrachud has granted majority approval to such aspects with the divided decision of 6:1. This decision is intended to make sure that all the beneficial accreditations arising from reservation are conferred to the most retrograde subgroups within the SCs and STs.
All six judges who were part of the bench which also comprised Justices B. R. Gavai, Vikram Nath, Bela Trivedi, Manoj Misra and Satish Chandra Sharma, gave their separate judgments. Sub-classification had been affirmed by almost all the judges save for Justice Trivedi but they were divided apprehensively on the implementation of the creamy layer.
Justice Gavai, speaking on his behalf, delved on the discovery and elimination of the creamy layer as a way of implementing real equality as provided in the Constitution. He emphasized that SCs and STs states families require policy formulation on how to separate the technologically savvy persons from the rest of society.
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Justice Satish Chandra Sharma agreed on the same premises that it should be a constitutional mandate to determine the creamy layer. He stressed the need for growing a systematic paradigm in order to ensure the right implementation of this principle.
At present the creamy layer concept is used only for the OBCs where the households earning more than ₹ 8 lakh per annum have been kept out of the ambit of reservation. The same is added to SCs and STs following the Supreme Court’s ruling stating so, and the decision made in the Jarnail Singh v. Lachhmi Narain Gupta in 2018 on the application of the creamy layer principle to SC/ST reservation in promotions.
Justice Bela Trivedi was the only judge who dissented on the idea of extending creamy layer exclusion to the SCs and STs and effectively against the sub-classification.
The judgment marks a clear new direction of the reservation policy, the purpose of which is to improve the functioning of affirmative action by filtering out the undeserving cases within the SC and ST groups.
Report By: Sonali Sarkar
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