In Supreme Court, Centre’s push to review exclusion of SC, ST creamy layer

The Centre on Monday asked the Supreme Court to set up a larger bench to decide on the exclusion of creamy layer for reservation benefits to people from the scheduled caste and scheduled tribe communities.

Attorney general KK Venugopal told the top court on Monday that a bench of 7 judges should be set up to revisit the 2018 ruling in the Jarnail Singh case that held the principle of creamy layer should be applied to SC/ST communities for reservation in promotions.

At the heart of the 2018 verdict lay a judgment delivered 12 years earlier. This 2006 judgment had effectively implied that SC and ST employees could get guaranteed promotions only if the government produces hard data to demonstrate “compelling reasons”.