Reservation in promotion for SC/STs: Supreme Court to hear on August 3

The Supreme Court will start hearing the case relating to reservation for SC/ST in the matter of promotions on August 3.

The Court will be reconsidering the correctness of its 2006 judgment in M Nagaraj v. Union of India.

A Bench of Chief Justice Dipak Misra and Justices AM Khanwilkar and DY Chandrachud today heard a batch of cases before agreeing to list the case at 2 pm on August 3.

Senior Counsel Rajeev Dhavan, Indira Jaising and Shekhar Naphade appeared for various parties.

Dhavan submitted that the matter needs to be heard at the earliest.

Attorney General KK Venugopal agreed with Dhavan stating that “many complications have arisen after Nagaraj”.

“Lots of vacancies have arisen due to the same, I agree with Dr. Dhavan”, said Venugopal.

In M Nagaraj v. Union of India, the Supreme Court had held that the state is not bound to make reservations for SC/ST employees in the matter of promotions. However, it also laid down three factors which ought to determine the state’s policy in this regard. They are:

(i) backwardness of the class;

(ii) inadequacy of representation in service; and

(iii) overall administrative efficiency

Further, the 5-judge Constitution Bench in M Nagaraj also held that the state has to gather quantifiable data to determine the adequacy of representation and extent of backwardness of a certain class

In November last year, a Division Bench of Justices Kurian Joseph and R Banumathi had, heard a plea filed by the state of Tripura and referred it to a constitution bench to decide the correctness of Nagaraj.

In that order, the Bench noted that the issue of interpretation of Article 16 – especially in the context of three apex court cases on reservations, namely, Indra Sawhney and others v. Union of India, EV Chinnaiah v. State of AP and M Nagaraj and others v. Union of India and others – was under debate.

It was further noted that there were calls to revisit M Nagaraj, given the fact that it failed to refer to Chinnaiah, which preceded it. Moreover, it was argued that the test of backwardness for the SC/ST community, as mandated by M Nagaraj, requires a relook. This, the Bench determined, could only be looked into by a Constitution Bench.

Read the order below.