Exclude ‘creamy layer’ among SCs, STs from reservation: Apex court delivers landmark judgment
The Supreme Court today (Thursday, August 1) delivered a landmark judgment, saying that states must identify the ‘creamy layer’ within the scheduled castes (SCs) and scheduled tribes (STs) and exclude them “from the fold of affirmative action”, that is, from quota benefits.
A ‘creamy layer’ is a category of people within reserved categories—SCs and STs in this case—which is economically and socially advanced.
At present, the concept of ‘creamy layer’ is applicable only to the reservation for other backward classes (OBCs).
Additionally, by a majority judgment, the seven-judge bench—comprising Chief Justice DY Chandrachud, and Justices BR Gavai, Vikram Nath, Bela M Trivedi, Pankaj Mithal, Manoj Misra and Satish Chandra Sharma—determined that sub-classification within SC and ST reservations is permissible, overturning the previous ruling in the EV Chinnaiah case, which held that sub-classification was not allowed as SC/STs constitute “homogeneous classes”.
“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,” Justice Gavai stated in his judgment.
