Creamy layer must be excluded from SC/ST reservation: SC Constitution Bench
Satya Prakash
New Delhi, August 1
The state must evolve a policy for identifying the creamy layer even from the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes so as exclude them from the benefit of reservation, the Supreme Court said on Thursday.
Currently, creamy layer criteria are applicable only to Other Backward Classes (OBCs) in order to exclude the better-offs among them from quota benefits, in terms of the 1992 nine-judge Constitution Bench verdict of the Supreme Court in the Indira Sawhney case.
However, four of the six judges on the seven-judge Bench led by CJI DY Chandrachud – which ruled by a 6:1 majority that sub-classification in Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes was permissible for the purpose of reservation – said the creamy layer among the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes should be identified and excluded from reservation.
“In my view, only this and this alone can achieve the real equality as enshrined under the Constitution," wrote Justice BR Gavai in his 281-page verdict.
Justice Gavai said that the criteria for exclusion of the creamy layer from the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes for the purpose of affirmative action could be different from the criteria as applicable to the Other Backward Classes.
“I have no hesitation to hold that putting a child studying in St Paul's High School and St Stephen's College and a child studying in a small village in the backward and remote area of the country in the same bracket would obliviate the equality principle enshrined in the Constitution,” Justice Gavai wrote.
He said that “putting the children of the parents from the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes who on account of benefit of reservation have reached a high position and ceased to be socially, economically and educationally backward and the children of parents doing manual work in the villages in the same category would defeat the constitutional mandate.”
The other three judges who favoured extending the concept of creamy layer to SC/ST reservation were -- Justice Vikkram Nath, Justice Pankaj Mithal and Justice SC Sharma.
“I am also in agreement with the opinion of Brother Justice Gavai that ‘creamy layer’ principle is also applicable to Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes, and that the criteria for exclusion of creamy layer for the purpose of affirmative action could be different from the criteria as applicable to the Other Backward Classes,” wrote Justice Nath.
Justice Mithal said, “…my brother Justice Gavai has rightly concluded that the state must evolve a policy of identifying the creamy layer even from the scheduled castes and scheduled tribes so as to exclude them from the benefit of reservation.”
Justice Sharma wrote, “…on the question of applicability of the ‘creamy layer principle’ to Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes, I find myself in agreement with the view expressed by Justice Gavai i.e., for the full realisation of substantive equality inter se the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes, the identification of the ‘creamy layer’ qua Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes ought to become a constitutional imperative for the State.”
