On Wednesday, the Supreme Court quashed the Maharashtra law that offered reservations in public jobs and educational institutions to the Maratha neighborhood. The apex court has rightly ruled the more reservation for the Maratha neighborhood violates each Articles 14 and 15 of the Constitution the initially is the suitable to equality and second prohibits discrimination on grounds of religion, race, caste, sex or location of birth.
Striking down the findings of the Gaikwad Commission and setting aside the Bombay High Court’s judgement that validated the state’s SEBC Act, the 5-judge Constitution bench headed by Justice Ashok Bhushan observed that to transform the 50% limit would be tantamount to obtaining a society which is not founded on the principles of equality but based on caste guidelines.
Over the previous 3 decades, post the landmark Indra Sawhney judgement of 1992, some neighborhood or other has managed to win itself a quota—with government support—making mockery of merit. Governments have attempted to negate a variety of apex court judgements on quotas and attempted to hide specific laws on reservation from the SC’s scrutiny by classifying them beneath the Ninth Schedule. In IR Coelho (2007), the SC had ruled the Ninth Schedule was not sacrosanct if it violated Constitutional provisions on basic rights.
It was the government beneath Devendra Fadnavis that set up the Gaikwad Commission that advised more quotas for the Marathas, a politically crucial neighborhood in the state. Indeed, just after the Bombay High Court upheld reservations for Marathas in 2018, Maharashtra’s reservation quota enhanced to 65% or possibly even 75%, when you add prime minister Narendra Modi’s 10% quota for economically weak sections (EWS). It is, as a result, seminal that the judges located that the Marathas did not qualify for the “extra-ordinary circumstances”. The state government had argued that considering the fact that the population of backward classes is 85% and the reservation limit is only 50%, an improve in the reservation limit would qualify as an extraordinary circumstance. That none of the 5 judges located merit in this argument reflects how weak it was.
The SC has been clear: quotas are meant for these who are genuinely historically backward and a “dominant forward class … in the mainstream of national life” can’t lay claim to particular positive aspects that are not due to them. The Marathas account for more than a third of the state’s population and the neighborhood has spawned a number of prime politicians, like chief ministers. The SC’s observations will serve as a precedent for future instances really should other communities like the Jats or the Patidars plead for equivalent quotas. The SC has also completed properly to say it will not revisit the verdict or refer it to a bigger bench of re-consideration. This, in a sense, tends to make the ruling definitive, leaving no area for additional interpretation. It is pertinent, the bench observed, that “the Constitution (Eighty-first Amendment) Act, 2000 by which sub-clause (4B) was inserted in Article 16 makes it clear that ceiling of 50% “has now received constitutional recognition” even if it was an arbitrary determination by the court in 1992. This is relevant considering the fact that reservations are above the 50% threshold in a number of states like Tamil Nadu. While the bench unanimously upheld the validity of the 102nd constitutional amendment—that inserted Articles 338B dealing with the powers of the National Commission for Backward Classes and 342A dealing with the powers of the president to notify a distinct caste as SEBC—there was some distinction of opinion among the judges more than Article 32A. The judges differed on the query of whether or not it impacted the powers of the states to recognize such classes.