Can't Let Popular Politics Play Out In Grant Of Quota, Says SC

Subclassification within the Scheduled Castes (SCs) and Scheduled Tribes (STS) for the purposes of preferential reservation cannot become a tool of "popular politics", said a seven-judge bench in the Supreme Court on Thursday, adding that states cannot choose to completely deny quota benefits to any caste or tribe designated under their SC/ST lists.

- Utkarsh Anand

While reserving its judgment in a clutch of petitions on the permissibility of subclassification within the SC/ST bracket, the Constitution bench headed by Chief Justice of India (CJI) Dhananjaya Y Chandrachud observed that the court would lay down a set of guidelines if it were to eventually rule in favour of subclassification.

"Suppose a state says that out of 86 (castes), we are identifying only seven. Can you leave out others who are similarly circumstanced? Can the states do that? Normally under-inclusiveness is allowed as a principle and the state does not need to deal with everybody to deal with somebody. But we don't think that principle can apply here," said the bench, which also included justices BR Gavai, Vikram Nath, Bela M Trivedi, Pankaj Mithal, Manoj Misra and Satish Chandra Sharma.

Allowing the states to select only some castes from the list of the reserved categories for the full quota advantages, it said, would lead to a "dangerous trend in popular appeasement".

"By conferring benefits on the most backward, you cannot ensure that some who are most backward are only given while others are left out. Otherwise, this becomes a very dangerous trend in popular appeasement. Some state governments will pick a few castes, other state governments will pick some others... The idea is not to allow popular politics to play out in the grant of reservation," said the bench.