New Delhi: The Supreme Court is set to announce its verdict on Wednesday relating to a batch of petitions revolving around promotions in government jobs to the members of the Scheduled Castes/Scheduled Tribes community.
It will also decide whether the 2006 ruling against such quota should be revisited or not.
A Constitution Bench of Chief Justice Dipak Misra and Justices Kurian Joseph, Rohinton Nariman, S.K Kaul and Indu Malhotra had reserved verdict.
The Centre had maintained that there was no need for testing the backwardness of SC/ST employees while granting promotion.
It had stated that discrimination still exists despite the improvement in the social position of the SC/ST community in the last 70 years.
The Bench heard a batch of petitions seeking reconsideration of the '2006 Nagaraj judgment’ against such quota.
In October 2006, a five-judge Constitution Bench in the case of Nagaraj vs Union of India had concluded the issue by holding that the state is not bound to make reservations for SC/ST in matter of promotions.
However, if they wish to exercise their discretion and make such provision, the state has to collect quantifiable data showing backwardness of the class and inadequacy of representation of that class in public employment.
There must be compelling reasons, namely backwardness and inadequacy of representation which enables the states to provide for reservation keeping in mind the overall efficiency of the state administration.
Disagreeing with this finding, the Centre said there has to be a presumption of backwardness for SC/ST and that the 2006 judgment should not have stipulated for satisfaction regarding backwardness of the class in providing reservation in promotion.
It said the imprint on the forehead never disappears and would remain in force. It said the Nagraj judgment was unclear as to what it meant by quantifiable data and how it should be determined.
“What is inadequacy? How is it determined? What are the parameters—there is no answer in the Nagaraj judgment and hence it requires reconsideration.
