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| | The Supreme Court on Thursday virtually made it clear that irrespective of the final outcome of the petitions challenging the law providing 27 per cent reservation to Other Backward Classes, the affluent among them would not get the benefit of the affirmative action. While staying the operation of the Central Education Institutions (Reservation in Admission) Act, 2006, a Bench headed by Justice Arijit Pasayat said exclusion of creamy layer was part of the constitutional scheme. “It…needs no reiteration that the creamy layer rule is a necessary bargain between the competing ends of caste-based reservations and the principle of secularism. It is a part of Constitutional scheme,” the Bench said. The impugned Act did not exclude the creamy layer as most of the partners of the ruling United Progressive Alliance were against it. But now it would be difficult for the Government to defend the law on this particular point in view of a series of judgments, including some recent ones, emphasising that exclusion of creamy layer was a constitutional requirement. The Government has extended the argument that the concept of creamy layer was applicable only in reservations in public employment under Article 16(4) and not in reservation in education under Article 15(5) of the Constitution. However, quoting from its earlier judgments the apex court reiterated that “the concept of creamy layer cannot prima facie be considered to be irrelevant. The court said it would examine in detail if the Central Government’s stand was based on any sound foundation because the lists relatable to Article 16(4) formed the foundational base for Article 15(5). The court wondered how people in India wanted to gain the status of backward class. “It has to be noted that nowhere in the world do castes, classes or communities queue up for the sake of gaining backward status. Nowhere else in the world is there competition to assert backwardness and then to claim we are more backward than you,” the Bench observed, adding it was an unhappy and disturbing situation. The bench also referred to its recent verdicts in Nair Society and Nagraj cases wherein it had said that the exclusion of creamy layer was a constitutional requirement, which could not be dispensed with by the Centre of the states while taking any affirmative action. “A group of persons although are not as such backward or have by passage of time ceased to backward would come within the purview of the creamy layer doctrine evolved by this court. “The court by evolving said doctrine intended to lay down a law that in terms of our constitutional scheme no group of persons should be held to be more equal than the other group” the court had said in the Nair Society case. It had quashed the Narendran Commission report which had recommended raising of the annual income limit from Rs 1.5 lakh to Rs 3 lakh for exclusion of creamy layer from the backward classes in Kerala. Email: satya.prakash@hindustantimes.com |
