The reservation has always been an issue of much controversy. It has especially been prone to the discussion because of the creamy layer which tends to gets the benefit of the reservation even though they can do without most of the benefits. The Centre today told the Supreme Court that the creamy layer concept cannot be applied to deny benefits of quota in promotions to government employees of SC/ST community.
Attorney General K.K. Venugopal told a five-judge Constitution Bench headed by Chief Justice Dipak Misra that there is no judgment which says that ‘affluent people of the SC/ST community can be denied quota benefits by applying creamy layer concept’.He also said that the question of excluding a certain class of SC/ST employees has to be decided by the ‘president and the parliament and this exercise is not open to the judiciary’.
“Even a well-off person of SC/ST community cannot marry from a higher caste. The fact that some persons have become affluent does not take away the imprint of caste and backwardness,” stated the Attorney General.
Earlier on August 3, the SC had asked the Centre as to why states have not come forward with any ‘qualifiable data’ to decide the inadequacy and misrepresentation on the part of Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes in government services even 12 years after its verdict on the ‘creamy layer’. The court is looking into the 12-year-old verdict that had dealt with the issue of ‘creamy layer’ for reservations to SC/ST categories in government job promotions needs to be re-visited by a seven-judge bench.
The M. Nagaraj verdict of 2006 had held that the ‘creamy layer’ concept cannot be applied to ‘…SC and ST employees for promotions in government jobs, like two earlier verdicts of 1992 Indra Sawhney versus Union of India. Chinnaiah versus State of Andhra Pradesh had also dealt with creamy layer issue with regard to the Other Backward Classes category.