Apex court quashes AP's legislation on reservation

Showing its strong resentment to the politics over caste reservations, the Supreme Court on Friday quashed as unconstitutional an Andhra Pradesh legislation splitting the reservation in government jobs for scheduled castes among four sub-groups of castes within SCs.

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 gave this ruling while setting aside a five-judge bench verdict of an Andhra Pradesh High Court upholding the constitutional validity of the law.

The government had notified Andhra Pradesh Scheduled Castes (rationalisation of reservation) Ordinance on December 9, 1999 categorising the 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 that the reservation must be considered from social objective angle, having regard to the constitutional scheme, and not 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.