Remove creamy layers from reservation quota
The executive and the legislature should decide whether persons, who had availed of quota benefits and were in a position to compete with others, were to be excluded from reservation. It is necessary as the poor are becoming poorest and the rich are becoming richer.
Despite this issue was referred to a seven-judge Constitution bench verdict of the apex court in August last year, a bench of Justices BR Gavai and Augustine George Masih made the symbolic observation on the issue saying “We have given our view that taking into consideration the past 75 years, such persons who have already availed benefits and are in a position to compete with others, should be excluded from reservation. But it is a call to be taken by the executive and the legislature,” rightly said Justice Gavai.
While the Constitution bench, by a majority verdict, held states were constitutionally empowered to make sub-classifications within the scheduled castes (SC), which form a socially heterogeneous class, for granting reservation for the uplift of castes that were socially and educationally more backward among them. In the toal Society there is a pathetic condition for the underprivileged Muslims which is worse than the SCs and STs across the nation.
Justice Gavai, who was part of the Constitution bench and penned a separate verdict, had rightly said that the states must evolve a policy for identifying the “creamy layer” even among the SCs and scheduled tribes and deny them the benefit of reservation.
It is timely to refer to the apex court’s Constitutional Bench's verdict asking for the policy to identify such a creamy layer. Justice Gavai said the apex court’s view was that the sub-classification was permissible.
It is necessary to recall that the Constitution bench had directed states to formulate the policy and nearly six months had passed since. “We are not inclined,” the bench said.
No representation before the authority concerned will decide on the issue but there should be the nation's will in the minds of the Executive and the Legislature.
The states would not frame the policy and eventually the top court would have to intervene, to which the court said that the legislators are there. Legislators can enact a law, but they rely on their respective vote bank without doing justice to the nation's poorest of the poor sections.
On August 1 last year, the apex court’s verdict was clear on the states making a sub-classification on the basis of “quantifiable and demonstrable data” of backwardness and representation in government jobs and not on “whims” and as a matter of “political expediency”.
