Can't sub-categorise SC reservation: Apex court

Showing its disapproval of the politics of caste reservations, the Supreme Court on Friday quashed as unconstitutional an Andhra Pradesh legislation splitting the quota in government jobs for Scheduled Castes among their four sub-groups.

A five-judge Constitution Bench comprising Justice N Santosh Hegde, Justice S N Variava, Justice B P Singh, Justice H K Sema and Justice S B Sinha set aside a five-judge Bench verdict of the Andhra Pradesh high court upholding the constitutional validity of the law.

The AP government had notified the Andhra Pradesh Scheduled Castes (Rationalisation of Reservation) Ordinance of December 9, 1999 categorising SCs into four groups of castes for the purpose of sub-dividing the 22.5 per cent reservation available to them in government jobs.

Allowing the petitions filed challenging the High Court order, the apex court said reservation must be considered from the social objective angle, having regard to the Constitutional scheme, and not as a political tool. "Thus, adequate representation must be given to the members of Scheduled Castes as a group and not to two or more groups of persons or members of castes," it said.
 
The Bench said since the members of the Scheduled Castes were most backward amongst backward classes, it was not permissible for the government to further classify them into sub-groups.

Terming such micro-classification as violative of right to equality guaranteed under Article 14 of the Constitution, the court said "such classification of the members of different classes of people based on their respective castes would be violative of the doctrine of reasonableness."

It said that Article 341 of the Constitution provides that exclusion of "even of a part or group of castes from the Presidential List can be done only by Parliament."                                            

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