New Delhi: The Supreme Court will re-examine its 2004 judgment that held that Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (SC/STs) cannot be further sub-classified for the purpose of reservation.
“Once states have the power to make reservations, it can make sub-classification. The judgment of this court in E V Chinnaiah has been wrongly decided. Since E V Chinnaiah v. State of Andhra Pradesh has also been decided by a bench of five judges, let the matter be placed before the Chief Justice of India for the constitution of a bench of seven judges or more for hearing the matter,” said Justice Mishra-led bench which also included Indira Banerjee, MR Shah, Vineet Saran and Aniruddha Bose.
The bench said in its view the 2004 verdict was not correctly decided and states can make laws to give preferential treatment by subclassifying caste within SC/STs.
The bench referred the case filed by the Punjab government against the High Court order before CJI Justice S A Bobde for setting up of a larger bench to revisit the earlier verdict.
The case stemmed from a law enacted by the Punjab government in 2006 requiring 50 per cent of vacancies in the quota for SCs in recruitment to be filled up by the members of the Balmiki and 50 per cent by those from the Mazhbi community.