LegalAware
LegalAware.ai
EMPOWERING LEGAL AWARENESS

Real judgements, distilled

Legal Case Shots

Court judgements broken down into the case type, how the decision played out, and the lesson worth remembering, with the full judgement available as a PDF.

Frequently asked questions

Is this suitable for use in legal research and court filings?+

Legal Case Shots is built to help you quickly identify and understand relevant precedent. For citation in pleadings or filings, always verify against the full judgment PDF and current citation format (e.g., 2026 INSC ___).

How is a "lesson learnt" different from the judgment's holding?+

The holding is what the court legally decided. The lesson learnt translates that into a practical takeaway: what a lawyer should factor into case strategy or client advice as a result of this precedent.

Is the full judgment available, or just a summary?+

Both. Each case shows a distilled summary (case type, key holding, and lesson learnt) and links to the full judgment as a PDF for when you need the complete text for research or citation.

Can I filter judgments by date or case type?+

Yes. Use Advanced Filters to narrow results by decision date and by practice area, including Constitutional Law, Criminal Law, Service & Administrative Law, Family Law, Civil Property & Inheritance, and Labour & Industrial Law.

Can I search judgments by a specific judge?+

Yes. You can filter judgments by the judge or bench that decided the case, which is useful for tracking how a particular judge has reasoned on similar issues across multiple rulings.

What is Legal Case Shots?+

Legal Case Shots is a searchable database of Supreme Court of India judgments, each broken down into the case type, the court's key holding, and a practical lesson learnt, with the full judgment available as a PDF for citation or deeper reading.

Constitutional LawSupreme Court of India

Janhit Abhiyan vs Union of India

Writ Petition (Civil) · 2022 INSC 1175Decided 7 Nov 2022
Writ Petition (Civil) No. 55 of 2019
Uday Umesh Lalit · Bhat · Lalit

Background

The Constitution (One Hundred and Third Amendment) Act, 2019, which came into force on 14 January 2019, inserted Article 15(6) and Article 16(6) into the Constitution. These provisions allow the State to reserve up to 10% of seats in education and public employment for "Economically Weaker Sections" (EWS) of citizens, over and above existing reservations, but this EWS quota was defined to cover only people outside the existing Scheduled Caste (SC), Scheduled Tribe (ST) and Other Backward Class (OBC) categories. Janhit Abhiyan and a large batch of connected petitioners challenged the amendment, arguing that reservation based purely on economic criteria (ignoring social and educational backwardness) was itself impermissible, that excluding SC/ST/OBC citizens from the EWS quota was discriminatory, and that the amendment breached the pre-existing 50% ceiling on total reservations, all allegedly destroying the Constitution's "basic structure," which even Parliament cannot amend away. The Union of India defended the amendment as a valid exercise of Parliament's constituent power to advance economic justice.

Decision Breakdown

By a 3:2 majority, the Court upheld the 103rd Amendment in full. Justices Maheshwari, Trivedi and Pardiwala each held that (a) reservation based solely on economic criteria does not, by itself, damage the Constitution's basic structure: economic backwardness is itself a legitimate ground for affirmative action under the equality code and the Directive Principles (Articles 38, 39, 46); and (b) excluding SC/ST/OBC citizens specifically from this new EWS quota is not discriminatory, because those groups already benefit from separate, pre-existing reservation schemes under Articles 15(4)/15(5)/16(4), so leaving them out of a class-specific EWS carve-out is a rational, not arbitrary, distinction. The majority also found no violation of the 50% reservation ceiling that would destroy the basic structure. Justice Bhat, dissenting (with the Chief Justice joining), agreed that using economic criteria for reservation is, in principle, constitutionally permissible, but held that carving SC/ST/OBC citizens out of the EWS benefit purely because they already receive other reservations was arbitrary and amounted to "othering" the poorest, socially disadvantaged citizens, striking at the equality code's core principles of non-discrimination and non-exclusion. On that basis, Bhat's opinion held the newly inserted Articles 15(6) and 16(6) themselves violative of the basic structure and struck them down. Because the majority (3 votes) exceeded the dissent (2 votes), the challenge failed and the amendment stands valid and in force.

Lesson Learnt

A constitutional amendment passed by Parliament through its "constituent power" is not automatically vulnerable to being struck down merely because it changes how reservation works. Courts under the basic-structure doctrine intervene only when the core, unamendable identity of the Constitution (like the essence of the equality principle) is destroyed, not whenever a specific policy choice is altered. For ordinary citizens, this judgment is the reason the 10% EWS reservation in college admissions and government jobs is presently valid law in India, and it illustrates how a single 5-judge bench can produce four different reasoned opinions while still yielding one clear operative order.

Official source (sci.gov.in)View Judgment (PDF)
Janhit Abhiyan vs Union of India – Legal Case Shots | LegalAware