'State has no authority to tinker with Scheduled Caste lists'

SC QUASHES BIHAR GOVT’S 2015 NOTIFICATION

The Supreme Court has quashed a 2015 notification of the Bihar government by which it had deleted ‘Tanti-Tantwa’ caste from the Extremely Backward Classes (EBC) and merged it with ‘Pan/ Sawasi’ caste in the Scheduled Castes list.

A bench of Justices Vikram Nath and Prashant Kumar Mishra said the state government had no competence or authority to tinker with the lists of Scheduled Castes published under Article 341 of the Constitution. The Scheduled Castes list specified under the notification under Clause-1 can be amended or altered only by a law made by the Parliament, the bench said.

It said as per Article 341 neither the central government, nor the President can make any amendments or changes in the notification issued under Clause-1 without a law made by the Parliament, specifying the castes in relation to the states or Union territory, as the case may be. “We have no hesitation in holding that the resolution dated July 1, 2015 was patently illegal, erroneous as the state government had no competence/ authority/ power to tinker with the lists of Scheduled Castes published under Article 341 of the Constitution,” the bench said in its verdict pronounced on Monday.

It added that the submission of the state government that resolution dated July 1, 2015 was only clarificatory is not worth considering for a moment and deserves outright rejection.