Introduction

• The Supreme Court examined the validity of constitutional amendments enabling reservation in promotions for Scheduled Castes and Tribes, consequential seniority, and carrying forward unfilled vacancies.

Facts

• The petitioners challenged the constitutional validity of several amendments related to reservation in promotions for Scheduled Castes (SCs) and Scheduled Tribes (STs) in government services.
• The main amendments challenged were the Constitution (77^th Amendment) Act, 1995 inserting Article 16(4A), the Constitution (85^th Amendment) Act, 2001 providing for consequential seniority for promotions under Article 16(4A), the Constitution (81^st Amendment) Act, 2000 inserting Article 16(4B) on carrying forward unfilled vacancies, and the Constitution (82^nd Amendment) Act 2000 inserting a proviso to Article 335 on relaxing qualifying marks.

Issues

• Whether the amendments challenged by the petitioner are constitutionally valid or not?
• Whether the article 16(4A) and (4B) destroy the structure of article 16?

Judgement

• The Supreme Court upheld the constitutional validity of all the impugned amendments related to reservation in promotions for SCs and STs.
• The court ruled that the amendments did not violate the basic structure of equality under Articles 14, 15 and 16 of the Constitution.
• The court held that the amendments are enabling provisions, allowing but not forcing the States to provide reservation in promotions if they identify backwardness, inadequate representation, and maintain overall efficiency.
• However, the court stated that the States must collect quantifiable data to justify reservation under the prescribed constitutional requirements like the 50% ceiling limit, the concept of creamy layer, and not extend reservation indefinitely.
• The court clarified that even if the States have compelling reasons, the reservation cannot lead to excessiveness or breach the substantive constitutional limits.
• The court laid down principles for examining the validity of specific State Acts providing for reservation in promotion in individual cases.
• The court also emphasized the catch-up rule.
  • The catch-up rule is that the candidate who is from a reserved category gets promoted earlier than his senior general candidates in the feeder grade and he shall be junior to the senior general candidates in the promoted category.
• The court held that catch-up rule and consequential seniority are not beyond the amending power of the parliament.
• The Court upheld the constitutional validity of Article 16(4B) inserted by the Constitution (81st Amendment) Act, 2000, which allowed for carrying forward of unfilled vacancies reserved for SCs/STs to subsequent years, to be treated separately from the vacancies of the year they are being filled.
  • The Court observed that by lifting the 50% ceiling on carry-over vacancies through Article 16(4B), while retaining the ceiling for current vacancies, a time factor comes into play.
  • The States will now have to introduce a time-cap depending on the fact-situation, in the interest of overall administrative efficiency under Article 335.
• The Court clarified that even for carrying forward unfilled vacancies, the States will have to show the existence of compelling reasons of backwardness, inadequacy of representation, and compliance with overall administrative efficiency in each case.

Conclusion

• SC upheld the constitutional amendments enabling reservation in promotions for SCs and STs while reiterating the substantive constitutional limits and safeguards on the exercise of this power by the States.