Senior lawyers endorse SC decision on reservations in job promotion

Senior lawyers on Wednesday applauded the Supreme Court's decision not to refer its previous order on quota in job promotion to a larger bench and upheld the previous M Nagraj verdict dealing in reservation in job promotion.

Supreme Court lawyer Manoj Gorkela applauded today's decision and termed it a big relief for Scheduled Caste (SC) and Scheduled Tribe (ST) people.

He said, "This is a very big relief for crores of SC/ST people. There were some prime barriers in M Nagraj verdict, first one was backwardness on which Supreme Court upheld Indira Sahini and said that there is no need to examine the degree of backwardness. States were facing a lot of problem in quantifiable data collection and this issue has also been resolved. The biggest takeaway is that promotion in the reservation will remain in this country and states can implement it."

Special Counsel for the Maharashtra government Rakesh Rathore said, "Today, the matter pertaining to promotion in the reservation was decided upon. The Supreme Court was hearing a petition on whether the previous full bench judgment of M Nagraj needs reconsideration or not. On that, the Supreme Court has said that except for one point with respect to backwardness, the whole judgment should be upheld. The Supreme Court has said that people belonging to SC and ST do not need to prove their backwardness since they are already deemed to be backward."

Rathore also added that the matter was on reconsideration and the court felt that there is only one thing that needs to be changed in M Nagaraj and accordingly the provision for proving their backwardness has been removed and rest has been upheld.

Senior advocate Abha Singh also applauded the decision for not making the reservation in job promotion as mandatory and said, "The Supreme Court bench under Chief Justice Dipak Misra has rightly said that Nagraj bench decision will not be referred to a larger bench of seven judges. The Supreme Court has said that there will be no mandatory reservation in promotion and there will be no obligatory quota for promotion, rightly so because as of now you may give reservation in job to SC/ST and Other Backward Class on the ground that they have been discriminated upon but nowhere it is justified that you have to give reservation in promotion. It is a very sensible judgment."

The Supreme Court of India, in a very significant decision today, upheld the Nagraj verdict. The Nagaraj judgment dealt with the issue of reservation in promotions for members of the SC/ST communities. In the M Nagaraj verdict, the Supreme Court had laid down the criteria for the SC/ST reservation in promotion.

The court held that while state governments are not bound to provide reservations for the benefit of SC/ST communities when it comes to promotions, it will be mandatory for them to fulfill certain criteria if they decide to implement such a policy.