"Reservation Like Train Compartment…": Supreme Court Judge's Big Remark
New Delhi:
Caste-based reservation in the country has become like a train compartment and people who get into this compartment don’t want to let others in, a Supreme Court judge said today. Justice Surya Kant, who will take over as Chief Justice later this year, made the observations while hearing a case related to reservations for Other Backward Classes (OBCs) in local body polls in Maharashtra.
Local body polls in Maharashtra were last held in 2016-2017. The key reason for the delay in holding posts in the legal fight over quota for candidates from Other Backward Classes (OBCs). In 2021, the Supreme Court struck down a Maharashtra government ordinance to implement a 27 per cent quota for OBCs. The court laid down a three-fold test: (1) setting up a dedicated commission to conduct contemporaneous rigorous empirical inquiry into the nature and implications of backwardness in local bodies of the state, (2) specifying proportion of reservation required to be provisioned in local body wise in the light of recommendations of the Commission, (3) total reservation for SCs/STs/OBCs shall not exceed 50 per cent. Since then, delays in data collection and litigation have stalled attempts to hold the local body polls in the state.
Advocate Indira Jaising, appearing for the petitioner, told the court that despite the identification of OBCs during delimitation, Maharashtra was not using the data for the local body election. She stressed the need to hold elections for local bodies soon and alleged that the state government was running local bodies unilaterally through handpicked officials.
Advocate Gopal Sankaranarayanan, appearing for a petitioner in the same matter, told the court that within the OBCs, politically backward and socially backward classes should be identified for the purpose of reservations. Justice Surya Kant then said, “Reservation in the country has become like train compartments, people who have got in don’t want to let others come in. This is the principle of inclusivity. Governments are duty-bound to identify more classes. There are politically, economically and socially deprived people. Why should they not get the benefit (of reservation)? Only a few families and groups are getting the benefit,” he added. The court will hear the matter again later in the day.
Interestingly, the train compartment metaphor was used by Justice BR Gavai, who takes over as Chief Justice later this month, in his judgment that said the sub-classification of SC/ST categories is permissible and states can create these sub-classifications. “I find that the attitude of the categories in the Presidential List opposing such a sub-classification is that of a person in the general compartment of the train. Firstly, the persons outside the compartment struggled to get into the general compartment. However, once they get inside it, they make every attempt possible to prevent the persons outside such a compartment from entering it,” Justice Gavai said.
The senior judge’s remarks come at a time when the Centre has decided to include caste data in the next Census. The move, the BJP and its allies have said, will help identify backward sections and aid affirmative action. Opposition parties had been demanding a caste Census for a while.
