SC: Won’t revisit decision on quota in promotion to SCs, STs

New Delhi, September 14

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The Supreme Court on Tuesday made it clear that it won’t revisit its rulings laying down conditions for reservation in promotions to SC/ST employees even as the Centre and several states urged it to clarify the legal position on the contentious issue.

“We are making it very clear that we are not going to reopen Nagaraj (2006) or Jarnail Singh (2018) cases because the idea was only to decide these cases in accordance with the law laid down by the court,” a Bench led by Justice LN Rao said.

However, the top court asked the ‘Advocates on Record’ of state governments to identify issues peculiar to them and submit a five-page note each within two weeks and posted the matter for further hearing on October 5.

Several senior counsel representing various state governments said due to the confusion a large number of posts meant to be filled by promotion were lying vacant. Senior counsel PS Patwalia — representing Maharashtra and Bihar — said in Bihar around 60 per cent posts were lying vacant on account of ambiguity over the issue.

Attorney General KK Venugopal said the ruling in M Nagaraj’s case needed a fresh interpretation as it left a lot of ambiguities regarding reservations in promotions.

He said the Centre was constrained to make 1,400 promotions on an ad-hoc basis based on seniority to ensure that the functioning of the departments wasn’t affected, but contempt petitions had been filed against the Home Secretary over these appointments.