States must decide on SC/ST quota in promotions: Supreme Court

• The Supreme Court recently held that it cannot set a standard for determining the adequacy of Schedule Caste (SC) and Schedule Tribe (ST) representation in government job promotions, and instead urged states to collect quantifiable data on the matter.
• The court also stated that when collecting data for promotional positions, the unit of collection should be 'cadre' rather than the entire service.

What did the court say?

• The apex court went on to assert that apart from data collection, the assessment of inadequacy of representation should be taken up following a periodic review.
• The time period for the review should be reasonable and is up to the states to decide.
• Previously, the Union government had apprised the court that it is a 'fact of life' that SC and ST communities had not been brought to the same level of merit as other classes.
• The court also said that the Nagaraj judgment of 2006 “would have prospective effect”

Supreme Court's Nagaraj Judgement

Application of the “Creamy layer” principle

• The Supreme Court declared that the "creamy layer exclusion" criterion, which had hitherto exclusively applied to OBCs, might be extended to SCs and STs in order to deny reservation to the two communities' elites.
• The constitutional amendments that led to Article 16(4A) were upheld.
• As a result, the Constitution Bench decided that there was no need to review Nagaraj's decision in terms of the creamy layer test.
• The court endorsed the application of the creamy layer principle to SC/STs, stating that the goal of reservation would not be met if just the creamy layer within that class received all of the desired public sector positions, leaving the remainder of the class as behind as before.

Proof Of Backwardness Of SC/STs

• In the Nagaraj case, the Supreme Court ruled that the State must collect quantifiable data demonstrating the backwardness of the SCs and STs was unconstitutional.
• It claimed that this was antithetical to the nine-judge bench's decision in Indra Sawhney v. Union of India.
• It was pointed out that the nine-judge bench in the Indra Sawhney case had explicitly decided that the test or requirement of social and educational backwardness could not be applied to SCs and STs, who unquestionably fit within the definition of "backward class of citizens."

Reservation In Promotion Need Not Be In Proportion To Population.

• It was pointed out that while the Constitution mandates the proportionality test in Article 330 (Reservation of seats for SCs and STs in the House of People), it does not do so in Article 16(4A) (Provision of reservations in promotions).

Observations made by SC in Nagaraj judgment

• The quota for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes is "real fulfilment of effective and substantive equality by accounting for the structural situations into which persons are born" and is "not at conflict with the notion of meritocracy."
• Reservations for SCs and STs are not incompatible with the notion of meritocracy.
• Merit must not be limited to rigid and inflexible criteria like a standardised exam score, but must instead come from the acts that a society desires to reward, such as promoting equality in society and diversity in public administration.