New Delhi, August 1: States have the power to sub-classify Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (SCs and STs), the Supreme Court ruled on Thursday adding that the authority concerned, while deciding if the class is adequately represented, must calculate adequacy based on effective and not quantitative representation.
The Supreme Court ruled by a majority judgement of 6:1 that sub-classification within the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (SCs and STs) reservation is permissible. As many as six separate opinions were delivered in the case.
The judgement was delivered by the seven-judge bench led by Chief Justice of India DY Chandrachud, which overruled earlier judgement in the EV Chinnaiah matter, which had held that sub-classification was not permissible because SC/STs form homogenous classes.
Besides CJI Chandrachud, other judges on the bench were Justices BR Gavai, Vikram Nath, Bela M Trivedi, Pankaj Mithal, Manoj Misra, and Satish Chandra Sharma.
Justice Bela M. Trivedi, in a dissenting opinion, said that she disagreed with the majority judgement that sub-classification within the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes is permissible.
"The state for a valid exercise of power to sub-classify under Article 16(4), is required to collect quantifiable data with respect to the inadequacy of representation of the sub-categories in the services of the State. As held in the preceding section, the inadequacy of representation is an indicator of backwardness, and thus, using the cadre as a unit to determine representation alters the purpose of the indicator itself. The state, while deciding if the class is adequately represented, must calculate adequacy based on effective and not quantitative representation," CJI Chandrachud said.
