Even as it leads to a fine-tuning of affirmative action policies, many new questions will be sparked by the verdict.
Marking a milestone in the jurisprudence on affirmative action post-Mandal, the Supreme Court bench, led by Chief Justice of India D Y Chandrachud, has allowed sub-classification among Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes for the purpose of reservation, holding that this does not violate the Constitution. Extending the principle from the OBCs to the SCs/STs, the court over-rules the 2004 verdict in the case of EV Chinnaiah vs State of Andhra Pradesh. That verdict had been used by high courts to strike down preferential measures designed by various state governments for the more downtrodden castes within the SCs. Thursday’s judgment heralds a potential widening and deepening of the constitutional guarantee of equality — sub-classification, it says, must be seen as a facet of equality, not its violation, and as a movement towards its more substantive version, by expanding the sphere and scope of reservation to ensure that its benefits reach those who need it most. At the same time, conscious of the challenges in the path it opens, the Court warns against a reading that might replace the doctrine of equality with the “doctrine of classification”. For all the new possibilities it inaugurates, however, the court is essentially playing catch-up — be it in UP or Bihar, Punjab or Haryana, Andhra Pradesh or Tamil Nadu, political mobilisations have both responded to and sharpened distinctions within the SC category. Going ahead, political parties will now be called upon to mediate the effects on the ground of the Court’s imprimatur on the imperative to differentiate within.
The Court traces a long and arduous judicial arc — from a view of reservation as an honourable exception to the equality principle, and from seeing merit/efficiency and reservation in conflict, to challenging those binaries, and underlining that merit must be understood in terms of the social goods of equality and inclusivity. The Court recognises the difference between the OBCs and SCs — SCs suffer from a much more egregious form of social backwardness. And it takes note of arguments that sub-classification could be seen as discrimination in reverse, or that other measures, apart from reservation, could be taken to bring disadvantaged groups at par with disadvantaged groups within the SC category. Yet, it holds that the principle of sub-classification is applicable to the SCs to bring a much-needed deeper equality. It points to historical and empirical evidence that SCs are not a homogeneous category. The caste whose traditional occupation is scavenging, for instance, will be more backward than the one whose traditional occupation is weaving, even as both suffer the stigma of untouchability. There are other criteria too — certain SC groups have substantially lower literacy rates than the state average, and substantially lower representation in government jobs compared to their share in the population.
Even as it leads to a fine-tuning of affirmative action policies, many new questions will be sparked by the verdict — how are the levels of backwardness to be determined, and what will be the design of preferential policies by state governments. But the way forward will hinge, essentially, on whether the core intent of the verdict — to acknowledge and address the intense inequality within SCs — is taken on board and translated on the ground, or it becomes a pretext for political misreading and tinkering.
© The Indian Express Pvt Ltd
First uploaded on: 02-08-2024 at 07:53 IST
