Supreme Court Reserves Verdict On Sub-Classification Of SCs, STs For Reservations

New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Thursday reserved its verdict regarding the legal question of whether a state government can create sub-classifications inside scheduled castes and scheduled tribes in order to provide reservations for admissions and public jobs.

Attorney General R Venkataramani, Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, senior advocate Kapil Sibal, and states represented by senior advocates presented their cases before a seven-judge constitution bench led by Chief Justice DY Chandrachud in an attempt to review the 2004 ruling in E V Chinnaiah, which held that all SC communities—who for centuries had been subjected to discrimination, ostracism, and humiliation—represented a homogeneous class that could not be subdivided.

23 petitions are being heard by the bench, which also includes justices BR Gavai, Vikram Nath, Bela M. Trivedi, Pankaj Mithal, Manoj Misra, and Satish Chandra Mishra. The lead case was filed by the Punjab government to overturn the 2010 Punjab and Haryana High Court ruling.