SC cautions against quota politics

Showing resentment towards the politics in caste reservations, the Supreme Court today quashed as "unconstitutional" an Andhra Pradesh legislation, splitting the reservation in the government jobs for Scheduled Castes among four sub-groups of castes within them.

A five-judge Constitution Bench comprising Justice N Santosh Hegde, Justice SN Variava, Justice BP Singh, Justice HK Sema and Justice SB Sinha gave this ruling while setting aside a five-judge Bench verdict of the Andhra Pradesh High Court upholding the constitutional validity of the law.

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

Allowing the petitions filed and challenging the high court order, the apex court said reservation must be considered from a social angle, giving due regard to the constitutional scheme, and not treat it as a political issue.

"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 noting that the members of the Scheduled Castes were the most backward, even amongst the backward classes, it was not permissible for the government to further classify them into sub-groups.

Terming such micro-classification as violation of the Right to Equality guaranteed under Article 14 of the Constitution, the apex 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 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." "State legislatures are forbidden from doing that," the Bench said and added that the ordinance was "beyond the legislative competence" of the state government.

"A uniform yardstick must be adopted for giving benefits to the members of scheduled castes for the purpose of the constitution. The impugned legislation being contrary to the above Constitutional scheme, cannot, therefore, be sustained," the court said.

Constitution Bench ruled terming the ordinance ultra vires of the Constitution.

On October 25, 1998, the Andhra Pradesh chief minister had convened an all-party meeting on the issue and it was resolved that the permission of the President would be sought.On November 29, 1999, the Union home ministry had conveyed the instructions of the President approving the promulgation of the ordinance.